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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726728">Sin City's cold and empty / No one's around to judge me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla'>Emjen_Enla</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompted Works [54]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fake Marriage, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, Gen, Haphephobia, Kaz Brekker Turns Out to Have a Conscience, Kaz and Inej's Backstories Are Their Own Warnings, Kaz's Jordie Hallucination, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Matthias Lives AU, Post-Book 2: Crooked Kingdom, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scams, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, new adventures, pyramid schemes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:55:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,733</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Kaz turns out to actually have something resembling a conscience, much to the shock of everyone involved.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>All theoretical combinations of the Crows, Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker &amp; Original Character(s), Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa, Matthias Helvar/Nina Zenik</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompted Works [54]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366669</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fandom Trumps Hate 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. (1)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincyclopedia/gifts">lincyclopedia</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was written as a gift for Fandom Trumps Hate 2020. I'm sorry it's such a long time coming. Hopefully you enjoy it anyway.</p><p>Title from “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd, less because it actually makes sense, and more because in my head this song is very strongly associated with April 2020 when I started working on this fic.</p><p>Those of you who follow me on Tumblr already know that I wrote the first 14K of this without naming any of the OCs...That takes talent even for me.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sun set over Ketterdam, glinting off the <em>Stadhall</em>, and the Merchant Council’s chambers and the Church of Barter, bathing everything in a golden light that made everything seem more hopeful than it actually was.</p><p>The light also glinted off the masts of a ship called the <em>Wraith</em> which had docked just a few hours before. As a result, Kaz Brekker was in a hurry. He only had a few more things to tie up before he could call it a night and make his way across town to the Van Eck mansion. Jesper and Wylan had planned a party celebrating the return of the ship’s heroic captain, and while Kaz would die before admitting it, he was looking forward to it.</p><p>As a result, he was putting things away much earlier than he usually did when someone rapped on his office door. “What is it?” he called.</p><p>“There’s somewhere here to see you, Boss!” Anika called from the other side.</p><p>“Tell them there are no meeting spots left today.” Kaz growled back, sliding rapidly towards annoyed. Even if he hadn’t had somewhere to be he would not meet with some gangster who wanted to throw their weight around this late. He was the king of the Barrel these days and people waited for him.</p><p>“Right, Boss,” Anika said, and she must have managed to turn whoever it was away because there were no further knocks on the door. Kaz finished putting things away (a relative term because the office in the Slat was almost as cluttered under his inhabitance as it had been when it had been Per Haskell’s, albeit with much less lager and fewer model ships) and left the Slat through the front door. Several people called goodbye, but he ignored them.</p><p>He was only a few steps from the door when something flew out of the shadows towards him and latched onto his arm. He lashed out immediately, jerking his arm free. Only the small voice crying, “Mr. Brekker!” stopped him from retaliating with jaw-crushing force with his cane. Contrary to popular belief, the Bastard of the Barrel wasn’t soulless enough to be unmoved by the idea of hurting children.</p><p>And it was a child. As he pulled free of the unwanted touch and stepped back, Kaz saw it was a little dark-haired boy in ragged clothes that had probably been nice at one point. He was barefoot and his feet were dirty and bleeding.</p><p>“You’re not from Ketterdam are you?” Kaz asked, his voice smooth and unperturbed, straightening his gloves. He had not gotten to the position he was in today to let his revulsion at touch be known. He and Inej had been working at it, and things were better on that front, but he always needed to know when the touch was coming so he could brace himself. Unexpected touches were still near impossible to bear.</p><p>The boy blinked up at him in confusion. “How did you know?”</p><p>Kaz leaned in as close as he could with the memory of the harbor sloshing around his ankles. “Because everyone in Ketterdam knows not to touch me,” he hissed.</p><p>The boy pulled back, eyes widening in fear. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brekker!” he said. “I meant no offense!”</p><p>Kaz hadn’t spent an extended amount of time around non-Barrel children in years. It seemed he’d forgotten what they were like, with all their good manners and respect for adults. Of course, Kaz had once been one of those kids. He’d known all the pleases and thank yous and yessirs and nosirs and the “children are to be seen not heard” bullshit, but it turned out none of that got you anywhere when you were starving and homeless so he’d let it all fall to the wayside. Manners got you killed.</p><p>“What do you want?” Kaz asked, ignoring the boy’s apology.</p><p>“I tried to get in to talk to you before, but the lady sent me away,” the boy explained, clasping his hands in front of his body like a schoolboy. “So, I’ve been waiting here for you to come out.”  He paused and then went on in a whisper, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say, “I knew it was you because of your cane. Everyone says you use a cane with a crow’s head on it.”</p><p>So, this was the person who had tried to see him earlier. Kaz had been expecting someone a bit more Barrel-ish, if he was being completely honest. He leaned on his cane and gave the boy his most wicked smile, enjoying the kid’s obvious terror. He needed to get moving or risk being late to the party, but he had enough time for this. “And what gave you the idea that I would deign to speak to you?”</p><p>“Well,” the boy fidgeted with his fingers. “We’ve been here for about a week and we’ve heard people talking about you all the time. They say you’re the king of Ketterdam, and when you need help you go to the king.”</p><p>Kaz snorted, only a soft boy not from Ketterdam would mistake one of Kaz’s many titles as a real position he held. “And what makes you think I listen to people’s pleas?” he asked.</p><p>“People also say that you care more about us than the merchants do,” the boy was starting to look truly nervous. Maybe it was finally starting to get through his thick head that he’d made a huge mistake.</p><p>“That means nothing,” Kaz said. “A slug could care more for the people of the Barrel than the Merchant Council does.”</p><p>“But you’ll help us, won’t you?” the boy asked. Okay, he wasn’t catching on quite as thoroughly as Kaz had thought he was.</p><p>“Coos!” another, slightly older, boy materialized out of the darkness and pulled the younger boy into a huge hug. “I was looking everywhere for you! I thought something had happened. I was so worried!”</p><p>“I’m fine, Theo,” the younger boy—Coos, apparently—said, pushing the other boy away. “I was making plans. He’s going to help us solve our problem.”</p><p>“Am I?” Kaz asked, raising his eyebrows.</p><p>The older boy—Theo—looked at Kaz for the first time. “Coos,” he said, “Who’s this?”</p><p>“This,” Coos said expansively, like he couldn’t think of a single concerning thing about what he was about to say. “Is Kaz Brekker, King of Ketterdam.”</p><p>It was almost hilarious how quickly the color drained out of Theo’s face. “Kaz Brekker!” he choked. “Coos, what were you thinking.”</p><p>“He’s going to help us,” Coos said. “Aren’t you, Mr. Brekker?”</p><p>“I don’t even know what you need help with,” Kaz said, shifting his weight to lean a bit more heavily on his cane. “How am I supposed to decide whether or not to help you?”</p><p>“Coos, we should go,” Theo said. “He’s not going to help us. He’s really dangerous. We should get out of here before he decides to kill us.” Theo had the same mop of dark hair as his younger brother and open face of a soft child who had never known the horrors of the Barrel. Like his brother his clothes were ragged and he was barefoot.</p><p><em>Like we were</em>. Jordie whispered. Kaz ignored him. Jordie didn’t speak as much as he once had—the passing years seemed to have soothed whatever raw part of Kaz’s mind conjured him—but Kaz still never responded to him. He figured that would be a bad sign.</p><p>“What exactly is it that you need help with?” he asked the boys. He wasn’t sure what drove him to do it, but he chose to blame curiosity, which was another thing that was always a bad sign. “You can’t accost me and then tell me nothing about what you want.”</p><p>“We were robbed, Mr. Brekker,” Coos said, earnestly. “We need you to get our money back.”</p><p>“Coos,” Theo said.</p><p>Kaz snorted. “You do realize who I am, correct? I’m the person who does the robbing, not the one who gets the money back.”</p><p>“It wasn’t like a bank robbery, though, Mr. Brekker,” Coos said, his gaze was still so earnest. He shoved at Theo, who was trying to pull him away, and planted his feet. “There was a man. He said he was going to teach us things, but then took all our money and dumped us here.”</p><p>“So, you were scammed,” Kaz said. “That happens to people every day in Ketterdam, both inside and outside the Barrel; it’s not something I would waste my time trying to correct.”</p><p> “We didn’t meet this man in Ketterdam, sir,” Theo said. He’d finally stopped pulling at his brother and now stood in the same hands-clasped manner. Had Kaz ever been this well-mannered and pathetic? “We met him in Belendt. We’re from just outside of there.”</p><p>That was interesting. Kaz had once heard someone say that if Ketterdam was the ass-crack of Kerch, Belendt was its heart. Belendt was a place of music and art, the streets were always clean and the people were always happy and always had enough to eat, or at least that was what Kaz had always heard. He’d never been to the city, but to hear the street children of the Barrel talk, Belendt was heaven.</p><p> What was interesting about the whole thing was that morally corrupt commerce—aka the way everyone in Ketterdam made their money—was illegal in Belendt and unlike in Ketterdam those laws were actually enforced. Kaz had never heard of anyone being scammed there and the scammer actually getting away with it. Actually, when Kaz had been younger and still working his way up through the ranks of the Dregs, one of Per Haskell’s enemies had ran a small con in Belendt and the Belendt <em>stadwatch</em> had chased him all the way to the Barrel and carted him off to stand justice. Kaz still didn’t know what they’d done to get the Ketterdam <em>stadwatch</em>—who were useless but liked to pretend they weren’t—to stand out of the way.</p><p>“Only fools try to pull one over on me,” Kaz said.</p><p>“The man’s name was Arnout Van Schoorl,” Theo said quickly. “He teaches at a school to help people make their way in Ketterdam without being scammed.” Kaz snorted, but Theo continued on, “Our parents died so we enrolled in the classes to learn what we needed to make our fortunes in Ketterdam. Only he never told us when we were going to graduate and just kept taking our money. When we ran out he gave us to a nasty man who brought us here to work in his factory. We ran away a week ago and we’ve been looking for help ever since.”</p><p>This “Arnout Van Schoorl” had probably indentured the brothers to the factory owner. All indentures in Ketterdam were basically slavery, but the factories were some of the worst. Most factory owners didn’t even try to pretend their indentures were earning money. Kaz had spent a fair portion of his early years in Ketterdam desperately avoiding ending up in a factory. Escaping one once you were stuck inside wasn’t easy. Despite himself he felt a twinge of respect for the boys.</p><p>“Will you help us, Mr. Brekker?” Coos said, looking up with earnest eyes.</p><p>“Help you with what?” Kaz asked, like he hadn’t already figured out what they wanted.</p><p>“Make him give us our money back,” Coos said, like Kaz was a saint not a demon.</p><p>“Please, Mr. Brekker?” Theo said. “We’ll starve to death otherwise.”</p><p><em>They’re like us.</em> Jordie whispered.</p><p>Kaz stared down at them as he thought. There was every possibility these boys were just trying to con him into giving them a place to stay for the night. If he said yes, he might end up drowned in a flood of Ketterdam’s amateur con artists who had all been told that he was going soft. However, he was a good judge of people’s ulterior motives after so many years and he didn’t think these boys were faking. What they said had happened was what had really happened. Of course, what did that matter to Kaz? He had bigger problems than scams happening in a city he’d never been to, even if he had been under the impression you couldn’t get away with such things there.</p><p><em>They’re like </em>us. Jordie insisted. <em>How many times have you wished someone would have helped us?</em></p><p>Too many times. Kaz rarely let himself think about it that way these days, but in his younger years he’d oscillated wildly between desire for revenge on Pekka Rollins and rage that no one in the whole world had been there to save him and Jordie despite everything he’d always been told about people being good and wanting to help others. That second feeling had faded over the years as his faith in humanity had died, but that didn’t change that fact that he had once been a soft boy ragingly angry that no one cared enough to help him. Coos and Theo probably felt the same way now. Did Kaz really want to be the person who started to teach them that unyielding selfishness was all you could expect from most of the people?</p><p>The boys stared up at him, all dark-eyed and dark-haired. If you squinted they looked like Kaz and Jordie had all those years ago before the Queen’s Lady Plague had killed them both in their own specific ways. Their faces were open and hopeful. They really thought there was a chance Kaz was going to help them. <em>Kaz</em>, Dirtyhands, the Bastard of the Barrel. It was laughable but at the same time one of the most serious things that had ever happened to him.</p><p>Kaz Brekker was a convinced atheist. He didn’t believe in Inej’s Saints or Matthias’s Djel. He especially didn’t believe in fucking Ghezen. Still, he knew Inej would see some significance in this. <em>“The Saints are giving you another chance, Kaz,”</em> she’d probably say. <em>“Don’t you see? This is your chance to fix things. This is your chance to do better than what others did to you.”</em> The thought was ridiculous, but Kaz had a hard time shaking it off. Could he really live with himself if he walked away now? Could he really claim to be the good guy in the battle he had won with Pekka Rollins two years before if he let the same thing happen to another pair of brothers?</p><p>But, these brothers were far from the first like them. It was impossible to save every lost soul in Ketterdam, but it was plenty possible to go insane trying. Kaz was better off walking away now, going to the party and forgetting this had ever happened.</p><p><em>Please, Kaz.</em> Jordie whispered.</p><p>That brought Kaz to a pause. In all the years he’d been whispering in Kaz’s head, Jordie had never once asked for something. It was enough to make him rethink everything, even though he’d sworn years ago never to listen to his brother’s voice.</p><p>He sighed. “Come on,” he turned on his heal and marched back into the Slat. He could hear the brothers padding after him on bare feet, whispering excitedly to each other.</p><p>Anika’s eyes got wide when she noticed Kaz coming back. “Is something wrong, Boss?” she asked, then her eyes landed on the brothers and her face darkened. “I told you to beat it,” she snapped at Coos.</p><p>“Anika,” Kaz said sharply, drawing her attention back to him. “Put these two up in the kitchen or something for the night. Have them help washing dishes or something to pay their keep.”</p><p>Anika blinked like she was wondering if Kaz had lost his mind. He wasn’t about to admit that that was a real possibility. “Okay…” she said, obviously trying and failing not to sound skeptical. “We’re taking them in, then?”</p><p>“I’ll tell you in the morning,” Kaz said, already turning on his heal. “Make sure they don’t get into trouble or run off.”</p><p>“Alright, Boss,” Anika pulled herself up. “Sure thing, Boss.”</p><p>“Night, Anika,” Kaz said and headed out into the street again. This time he was thankfully unaccosted.</p><p>He turned his feet towards the city center. He had some research to do.</p><p>It appeared he was going to be late to Inej’s party.</p><p>~~~~</p><p>The Kerch National Library was a large building attached to the Merchant Council Chambers. Apparently compared to the libraries in Shu Han it was quite pathetic, but it did have detailed records of every piece of legal paperwork ever notarized in the country.</p><p>In years past breaking into this place and getting information would have been Inej’s job, but now she was off pursuing her own path. The real disadvantage was that Roeder was nowhere near as good of a spider as Inej was, and Kaz didn’t trust him has implicitly. This left Kaz doing a lot of his own spidering. This was something he had done in the old days before Inej, but it was also something which had been much, much easier before he’d broken his leg.</p><p>Still on the scale of places in Ketterdam, the Kerch National Library wasn’t that difficult to sneak into. All you had to do was climb onto the roof and squeeze in through one of the narrow windows meant to let in light and air. Those windows weren’t even locked.</p><p>As a result, Kaz was inside in minutes and searching for the Belendt section. The last time Kaz had been in here it had been broad daylight and he’d been in disguise as part of a job. The building looked different at night with its shelves stretching up towards the ceiling like malevolent shadows. Fortunately, Kaz had lived in Ketterdam too long to be afraid of the dark.</p><p>Despite his relative unfamiliarity with the place, Kaz found the Belendt records fairly quickly. There were a couple tenser minutes while he figured out how to spell the name the brothers had given him, but soon he had Arnout Van Schoorl’s whole business history laid out before him.</p><p>There was a lot of information. There was a copy of every legal document that had ever involved Van Schoorl inside, from his birth certificate to the papers from his first job at a family coffee house in the Belendt suburbs to the purchase of a hotel in downtown Belendt just a few months before. There were also the full records of the court proceedings for a charge of public indecency as a teenager—something about running naked through downtown Belendt, apparently that was a more uncommon happening there than it was in Ketterdam. The completeness shocked even Kaz. The Kerch government was so bad at basically everything that didn’t pour money directly into their pockets that he wouldn’t have thought them capable of keeping track of documents to this magnitude, though he supposed they needed something to point at when they accused people who weren’t them of tax fraud. Kaz was tempted to find his own records just to see what there was. If Van Schoorl’s was anything to go by there was probably a copy of Kaz’s criminal record, the contents of which he’d always been morbidly curious about. Still, he had a mission for tonight and somewhere to be afterwards. He put his head down and started reading.</p><p>There was a lot you could learn about a person by looking at every legal document that had ever involved them. Kaz learned that Van Schoorl had been born and raised in Belendt to a family of modest but comfortable means. After a slightly wild and reckless teenage years which involved a number of run-ins with the Belendt <em>stadwatch</em> cumulating in the running-naked-through-the-streets incident, he’d been shipped off to the countryside to work on an uncle’s farm. He’d returned a number of years later apparently reformed and started business venture after business venture all of which fell through quickly due to poor management or lack of funds. A year and a half before, he’d been arrested for taking part in a ponzi scheme and done six months before being released for good behavior.</p><p>Then they got to the current business venture he was involved in, the School for Future Success. It was operated out of the hotel he’d bought a few months before and, as the brother’s had mentioned, it was at least superficially meant to teach people how to make their way and fortunes in Ketterdam. Anyone who was actually from Ketterdam would know at the glance that this was bullshit but apparently the paper pushers in Belendt had fallen for it. What was interesting was that Van Schoorl had gotten away with starting it. He was in the Belendt records as an unscrupulous businessman, meaning it should have been very difficult for him to get a business permit for something like this.</p><p>That was when Kaz turned his attention to the other person listed on the documents for the School for Future Success, a Judocus Snijders. He had cosigned on the business so Van Schoorl could dodge the restrictions on him and officially he had nothing to do with the business besides that legality. However, when Kaz went and got his record a different picture began to reveal itself.</p><p>Judocus Snijders had never had a run-in with the law beyond a citation for driving a carriage while drunk some ten years before, but to Kaz’s trained eye it was obvious he was an experienced scammer. Every business Snijders had ever been involved in had the subtle markers of a scam, even the ones which hadn’t been caught and shut down. He was also a somewhat underhanded scammer, always signing with other people who would take the fall when things went wrong. It was obvious that was exactly what was happening with Van Schoorl.</p><p>So now that Kaz had established that the School for Future Success was indeed a scam, he had to decide if it mattered to him. After all, it wasn’t like he could claim a moral objection to scams, given he’d run a fair number of them himself over the years. Admittedly, he preferred an honest heist to a scam any day, but he’d trained himself not to think about whether he was as bad as Pekka Rollins whenever he was involved in a scam. He’d never scammed children, though, that was one line he’d never crossed.</p><p>But why was he here? It would be the depths of hypocrisy to help these brothers when he’d had a direct hand in cheating other stupid pigeons out of their money over the years, but every time he thought of them he thought of how desperately he’d wanted someone to save him and Jordie. Could he live with himself knowing he’d had a chance to change another set of brothers’ fates and hadn’t? He snorted. Inej was wearing off on him. He’d never given any thought to moral quandaries before he’d met her.</p><p>These thoughts whirling in his head he put the records back the way he’d found them and snuck stealthily from the building only to find himself blinking in gray predawn light. Confused and disoriented, he fished out his pocket watch and blinked at the face which was traitorously displaying 5 o’clock in the morning. He’d been in the library the whole night. He’d missed Inej’s party.</p><p>Exhaustion crashed over him like a wave and he sunk down onto the rooftop in a heap of limbs. He sat there for a long while, cane lying across his lap, sort of stuck in the moment. He should go to the Van Eck mansion and try to smooth things over with the others, but they all kept to relatively normal sleep schedules with the exception of Jesper who didn’t seem to get tired until a couple hours later than everyone else did though even he would be asleep by now. If Kaz went there now he’d end up sitting in the kitchen staring at the walls until they woke up. There would be nothing to do but think about everything he’d just discovered and somehow the thought of doing that in the Van Eck mansion sounded worse than doing it on this roof in full view of the <em>stadwatch</em> if any of them bothered to look up.</p><p>Though Kaz didn’t want to admit it, he wasn’t sure what to do. That was not something he was used to. Sure, he had plans which went wrong and caused him to have to think on his toes sometimes, but it was not often a moral quandary caused him pause. He was not used to thinking about what the right thing to do was.</p><p>What was annoying was that this wasn’t even a question he should have been considering. He already knew what his response should have been. Coos and Theo had been scammed. That was very sad but it happened all the time and it wasn’t Kaz’s problem. He should go back to the Slat, tell Anika to throw the brothers out and wash his hands of the whole situation. That was how you survived in the Barrel, none of the rest of it mattered, but why did the idea of doing just what he’d been doing for the last decade make him feel so slimy and disgusting?</p><p><em>You can't save them all,</em> Jordie said. He was completely contradicting his earlier stance, but Kaz was used to that where his imaginary Jordie was concerned so he hardly noticed. <em>It's not worth it</em>.</p><p>Jordie was right. So many people were scammed in Ketterdam every day. Hell, Kaz made his money off scams. He really should just shrug this off and go on with his life, maybe taking some notes for a scam of his own, but still…He couldn't get the brothers’ faces out of mind. Coos and Theo were one plague from ending up just where Kaz and Jordie had ended up. Was Kaz really heartless enough to allow that?</p><p>"Maybe I can't save them all," he said. He was aware he was breaking his own rules talking to his imaginary brother, but this felt like the sort of thing that needed to be said. "But I can save them."</p><p>The sun broke over the horizon like a stupid cliché, bathing Ketterdam in pink and gold light. At that moment the city looked a hopeful as it ever would.</p><p>"Maybe that's enough," Kaz whispered.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. (2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I...forgot to keep posting. I'm going to try to keep posting more regularly now.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jesper Fahey walked into the mansion’s kitchen to get a cup of coffee and almost jumped out of his skin. “When did you get here?” he demanded.</p>
<p>Kaz, who was perched on a stool at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee held in both hands, raised an eyebrow. “Just now,” he said.</p>
<p>“Wy, Inej and Matthias have been up for hours,” he said. “They’re in the living room.”</p>
<p>“I just got here,” Kaz repeated.</p>
<p>“No, I thought you’ve been sitting here since yesterday evening ignoring the rest of us,” Jesper pulled down a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee into it. “Did you forget about Inej’s party last night or just decide it wasn’t important?”</p>
<p>“I was doing research and lost track of time,” Kaz said not looking up from his cup. He still drank his coffee black despite Jesper and Nina’s best attempts to introduce him to the wonders of cream and sugar. “Is Nina awake yet?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Jesper poured cream and spooned sugar into his coffee before hitching himself up on the countertop. “What do you want her for? Don’t you think you should apologize to Inej first?”</p>
<p>Kaz ignored him. Of course, he did. “I want to talk to you all,” Kaz said. “I have a job to suggest.”</p>
<p>~~~~</p>
<p> “So, you don’t bother showing up for the literal party but you show up early enough the next day to drag me out of bed?” Nina grumbled, folding herself onto the couch with Matthias, wrapped sullenly in her robe. Matthias wordlessly offered her a cup of coffee which she took and slurped while glaring over the rim at Kaz.</p>
<p>The six members of the crew which had broken into the Ice Court and scammed their way out of Jan Van Eck’s clutches were gathered in the mansion’s sitting room, waiting for Kaz to plead whatever case was so important he’d missed their get-together. Privately, Jesper thought he was going to have a hard time at that. Inej hadn’t looked at him since he’d come into the room and while Kaz wasn’t looking at her either, Jesper was very glad he didn’t have to have a part in <em>that</em> inevitable conversation.</p>
<p>“So,” Jesper pushed when Kaz didn’t say anything. “What was it that you wanted to talk to all of us about?”</p>
<p>Kaz still didn’t immediately respond. Actually, it looked like he was thinking hard. Jesper had gotten used to Kaz’s scheming face years ago but it was unusual for him to suggest a job while still being in the scheming phase. Kaz would probably die if he didn’t have full control of every job he was a part of, and one of the ways he guaranteed he had that control was by being miles ahead of everyone working with him from the start. Right now, he actually looked a little worried, like he was trying to decide what to say. Kaz didn’t look worried very often and it was honestly a little scary when he did. If Jesper hadn’t been so frustrated at Kaz for skipping the party he might have dared to ask if Kaz was alright.</p>
<p>“Well,” Matthias gestured, losing his patience.</p>
<p>“I stumbled across a new job last night,” Kaz said slowly. “I need a crew to do it.”</p>
<p>“Of course, you do,” Matthias rolled his eyes. “I assume there’s a major payout?”</p>
<p>“Not as big as the Ice Court, but yes there’s a payout,” Kaz said. He paused and then went on. “I wouldn’t bring this up to you all, if there wasn’t something in it for you.”</p>
<p>That was one nice thing about Kaz; he wasn’t the kind of person who expected people to do things for him for nothing. That was a bit annoying under normal, friendship-type circumstances because it meant you couldn’t do anything nice for him without him adding it to the list of things he owed you for (and one thing Jesper had learned over the years was that Kaz <em>always</em> paid his debts). In this kind of situation, however, it was handy.</p>
<p>“What is the job?” Nina asked and Matthias gave her a look. “What?” she asked. “You’re curious too.”</p>
<p>“A man named Arnout Van Schoorl runs a school in Belendt purported to teach people how to make their way in Ketterdam,” Kaz said slowly. “It’s a scam, obviously. I want to rob it.”</p>
<p>“Wait…” Jesper said. “You want to rip off someone else’s scam? That’s your plan?”</p>
<p>“That’s what I just said, isn’t?” Kaz asked.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>Kaz shrugged. “It’s supposed to be nice in Belendt this time of year.”</p>
<p>“This is kind of insane,” Matthias said.</p>
<p>“Do you have anything better to do?” Kaz asked.</p>
<p>That was another annoying thing about Kaz; he never asked you for things unless he was already sure you’d say yes.</p>
<p>~~~~</p>
<p>After the meeting broke up, Inej followed Kaz out of the sitting room and up the stairs towards the bedrooms. She waited until he reached the door to the bedroom Jesper and Wylan had set aside for him until she spoke.</p>
<p>“There’s something you’re not telling us about this,” she said.</p>
<p>Kaz didn’t jump. He’d known she was following him, but that was not unusual. “There are always things I don’t tell people,” he said, which was not an answer.</p>
<p>“This job is so mundane you normally wouldn’t bother with it even if it was in Ketterdam,” Inej said, “let alone miss the party last night for it.”</p>
<p>“Are you in trouble, Kaz?” she asked. “Is the Council of Tides causing you problems again?”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” Kaz said. “Why would I be anything else?” He was lying and they both knew it.</p>
<p>Kaz opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. He held the door open for her so she followed, ignoring the way they both instinctively avoided brushing against each other in the narrow confines of the doorway. Some things were still a work in progress.</p>
<p>“If it’s just a normal job,” she said when the door closed behind them, “why weren’t you here last night?”</p>
<p>Kaz crossed the room and stood over the bed. He reached for the buttons of his coat then stopped and dropped his hands back to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t turn to look at her and that’s how she knew he meant it. Kaz Brekker rarely apologized for anything, and on the off chance he did and actually meant it, he’d never look you in the face.</p>
<p>“You can prove that you are by telling me what’s actually going on,” Inej moved across the room to stand at the foot the bed, facing him. The corner of the bed separated them. It somehow felt both too far and too close. Inej didn’t dare sit on the bed; it felt too intimate. Kaz eyed her, visibly uncomfortable. She watched him decide he was being stupid and go back to removing his coat.</p>
<p>Things had been like this for her and Kaz these last few years. They alternated between careful moments of touches and hand-holding where it seemed like they were well on their way to overcoming their various demons, and moments where the air between them seemed charged with their collective terror that the other would try to touch. That had never been a problem before the Ice Court, back when they’d both been operating under the illusion they weren’t friends let alone anything else. Now that they knew that wasn’t the case and that touching was a thing they did, they ended up falling prey to each other’s desperate terror at the idea of being touched when they didn’t want to be.</p>
<p>Inej wasn’t exactly surprised that today was going to be one of these days. She was tired—she never slept well her first night back in Ketterdam—and she was fairly sure Kaz hadn’t slept at all. Neither of them was at their best, but it was still frustrating.</p>
<p>Kaz shook himself out of the moment, slid out of his coat, folded it carefully in half and laid it on the corner of the bed. His holster and waistcoat followed. She watched his visibly brace himself before removing his gloves. It was a peace gesture, though not the one she’d wanted. She was starting to realize that whatever other layers there were to the plot he had described downstairs, he wasn’t about to divulge them. She should have been annoyed, but after all these years she wasn’t even all that surprised.</p>
<p>“I want you to know that I’m not fooled, Kaz,” she said. “I know there’s something you’re not telling us about this. I’d hoped you’d trust me with it, but if you’re going to be like this, I’m just going to get frustrated.” She paused for a minute. “Do you have anything you want to tell me?” Saints, she felt like her mother.</p>
<p>Kaz looked away. He’d crossed his arms, tucking his bare hands into his armpits to protect them. She knew better than to point it out. Kaz tended to lash out like a cornered animal if you acknowledged his weakness and Inej was not in the mood for that. “It’s nothing,” he said.</p>
<p>“We both know that’s a lie,” she said. “But I can also tell that you’ve gotten it through your head that even I’m not to be trusted with the truth.” She sighed. “This conversation is getting nowhere. I’m going to go back downstairs and help Nina make breakfast. If you have a change of heart you know where to find me.”</p>
<p>She left him standing by the bed and headed back downstairs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. (3)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kaz slept like crap, which was perhaps unsurprising. His dreams were full of memories of what had happened to him and Jordie, replayed over and over in sick loops. He woke up a little before sunset with the memory of plague sirens ringing in his ears and the taste of the harbor in his mouth.</p>
<p>He snatched his gloves off the bedside table and pulled them on before he was even completely awake, but after that he lay still staring at the ceiling, waiting for his heartbeat to slow and his churning stomach to settle. He should have known better than to try to sleep after everything that had happened with Coos and Theo last night, but he’d been tired and he’d had a headache so he’d thought he’d try. Bad idea. He felt more exhausted than he had before he’d laid down.</p>
<p>After a while he felt like he had a good enough grasp on reality to try moving. He sat up and rubbed his hands down his face. The bed in the room and Jesper and Wylan kept insisting was Kaz’s was easily the nicest bed Kaz had ever slept in, but it was arranged so only the headboard touched a wall. Therefore, whenever Kaz slept here—which admittedly wasn’t very often—he rearranged the blankets and pillows so he could sleep across the head of the bed with his back to the wall.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure why he’d lied to the others. When he’d left the library, he’d planned to tell them. Actually, that was the whole reason he’d planned to bring them onboard. This scheme wasn’t so complicated that he couldn’t theoretically do it on his own, but something about the whole thing made him want someone backing him up. That was why he’d come to the mansion with plans of bringing the others onboard, but when it had actually been time to tell them, he’d looked at the shear amount of honesty that would be necessary to explain what exactly had led him to make this decision and hadn’t been able to do it. So, he’d made up a hypothetical job to get them to help. It was ridiculous. He should have just planned to do this himself from the start. Now he was stuck trying to wrangle some kind of profit out of this whole thing without the others figuring out what was actually going on.</p>
<p>He heaved a sigh and collapsed back onto the bed. This was going to be an interesting job.</p>
<p>He lay in bed staring at the ceiling and trying to scheme for a while. He’d given the others the very basic outlines of a plan the night before, but he’d been thinking on his toes and had left a lot out. If he was going to keep them from asking questions he needed to make sure he seemed like he had everything in control. This was not going to be that different that usual. He had run scams where he was simultaneously scamming both the mark and his own crew before, the fact that these were his friends shouldn’t make any difference.</p>
<p>After an hour or two he thought he’d figured things out well enough to at least avoid suspicion. He hauled himself out of bed, shaking out his bad leg which had gone stiff from being still too long. He hadn’t been planning to spend the night at Jesper and Wylan’s when he’d left the Slat so he hadn’t brought a change of clothes which was annoying.</p>
<p>When he made his way downstairs, things were in full swing. He’d given the others some basic instructions before he’d gone to bed, just things he’d known would have to happen without having a full plan, and it turned out they’d gotten right down to work. Their enthusiasm actually made him feel a bit better about dragging them all into this; it seemed like they’d all gotten sick of the lack of excitement which had ruled their lives for the last few years.</p>
<p>There was a lot of clanging and banging coming from the door to the basement where Wylan had built a lab for himself. Kaz basically trusted Wylan’s demo skills, but that was different than saying he enjoyed being around when he was experimenting. He liked his eyebrows where they were, thank you very much. He steered clear.</p>
<p>He found Jesper, Inej and Matthias in the kitchen, talking. Nina was nowhere in sight, which felt a bit odd, but it wasn’t like they were fugitives like they’d been the last time the six of them had all worked on the same scheme. It was possible she’d just gone out for something or had an appointment.</p>
<p>“I can’t believe you actually slept after having all that coffee, <em>demjin</em>,” Matthias said with a joking smile. He only ever called Kaz “<em>demjin</em>” jokingly these days.</p>
<p>“Nina’s getting dinner,” Jesper said. “Hope you’re hungry.”</p>
<p>Kaz wasn’t hungry, but that wasn’t necessarily unusual especially when there was a job in the works. “What’s she getting?” he asked.</p>
<p>“We said it was her decision,” Inej said, meeting his eyes. She cocked her head a little to the side and raised an eyebrow. “<em>Have you decided to tell me what’s really going on, yet?”</em> the expression asked. Kaz looked away.</p>
<p>“It’s going to be waffles,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s going to be waffles,” Jesper agreed.</p>
<p>“She was pretty excited about something before she left,” Matthias said. “Wouldn’t tell me what it was, though.”</p>
<p>“As long as she asked Specht for those fake IDs we need.” The coffee pot from the morning was still sitting on the stove so he crossed the room and peaked inside. There was still coffee so he poured a mug and turned around to face the others who were all staring at him with visible distaste. “What?” he asked.</p>
<p>“That’s disgusting,” Matthias, who could always be counted on to be honest about such things, said. “It’s cold.”</p>
<p>“It’s coffee. Does it really matter?” Kaz shrugged and downed part of the mug. Inej visibly shuddered.</p>
<p>The front door opened and footsteps sounded in the entryway. “I return bearing waffles!” Nina shouted.</p>
<p>“You couldn’t have come up with something more original?” Jesper shouted back.</p>
<p>Nina swept into the kitchen, holding a large paper bag. “You’re not fooling me,” she pointed at him playfully while she plopped the bag on the table. “I know you love waffles. We all love waffles.”</p>
<p>Kaz hid a smile behind his coffee cup. It would not do anything for his image to admit that he liked waffles as much as the rest of them did. Nina turned and caught sight of him. Her face spread into an excited grin that was actually a bit frightening. He wondered what could possibly have happened to make Nina so happy to see him.</p>
<p>She paused and did a double take. “Why did you make more coffee? You’ll never sleep tonight that way.”</p>
<p>“He didn’t make more coffee,” Inej said. “That’s the stuff from this morning.”</p>
<p>“Yuck,” Nina’s face twisted. “Every time I think you can’t get more uncultured, Kaz, you do.”</p>
<p>Kaz shrugged and took another gulp of coffee. Admittedly, it was much better warm, but it was coffee either way. You drank it to wake up, not because it tasted good. “Should someone get Wylan or are we just going to eat without him?” he asked.</p>
<p>“I’ll get him," Matthias said and got up.</p>
<p>They all watched him leave. “Is it safe to go down into that basement right now?” Inej asked Jesper.</p>
<p>“Probably,” Jesper said. “Wylan’s concoctions generally don’t explode before he wants them to, but I guess you never know.”</p>
<p>By the time Matthias and Wylan returned, Nina had laid out the waffle bounty out and they all dug in. For a few minutes they were all focused on their food. Kaz hadn’t thought he was hungry but once he started eating he found he was so he was on his second waffle before conversation started.</p>
<p>“So, I stopped to check up on Specht before I got the waffles,” Nina said. She had that crazy happy grin on her face again and Kaz found himself running through the list of all the things that could possibly make her so happy. “It’s probably going to take him until tomorrow night to finish all of them, but he got Kaz and Inej’s done,” she grinned even wider and pulled the two fake IDs out of her pocket. She held them out to them. “Go ahead and look.”</p>
<p>Kaz exchanged a look with Inej who seemed just as confused. They each took their card and studied it.</p>
<p>At first, Kaz didn’t notice what was making Nina so excited. The card was for a perfectly forgettable nineteen-year-old farmhand named Mies Aben. He was from just outside of Belendt, his description matched Kaz’s and the image on the card was Kaz’s own; there was nothing strange about it. He leaned a bit closer to Inej to look at her card, thinking that might be where the joke was and then he saw it.</p>
<p>The card was for a Sri Aben, also a farmhand from just outside of Belendt.</p>
<p>“What’s going on, Nina?” Inej asked.</p>
<p>Kaz didn’t remember the last time he’d seen Nina look this pleased with herself. “I told Specht to make yours like you were married,” she said.</p>
<p>~~~~</p>
<p>Inej had never been to Belendt before, in fact her time in Kerch had been near-exclusively spent in Ketterdam. When Kaz had told them, this job was in Belendt she’d expected the city to be a smaller version of Ketterdam, and in some ways it was. However, while the architecture was undeniably Kerch it didn’t feel like Ketterdam did, all greed and desperation. Inej was sure that it had it’s dark and corrupt side just like every city she’d ever been in, but it didn’t wear it as prominently as Ketterdam did.</p>
<p>The crew had trickled into Belendt over a couple days to keep from gathering suspicion. Inej and Kaz had come last because Kaz had wanted to make sure the Dregs spent as little time as possible in Anika’s care. When Inej had come to the Slat to meet him before they’d left he’d been giving Anika some last-minute instructions, including finding jobs for two orphans the Dregs had apparently picked up. This was the first Inej had heard of this, but she was pleased that Kaz was thinking about such things. Kaz had been passing information on slavers on to her for years, but he’d always acted like he did it for her and not out of any moral obligation. She privately suspected that was an act, but it was hard to tell since Kaz bent over backwards to avoid admitting even to himself that he had any sense of right and wrong.</p>
<p>The building where Van Schoorl was operating his school was just off Belendt’s main square. It was a tall structure that had been whitewashed recently enough that it was hard to look straight it. A very respectable sign out front read, “The School for Future Success” along with Van Schoorl’s name as director and a handful of other people listed as professors. It was all very legitimate-looking and Inej could see how people with little understanding of the underhanded lengths the Kerch would got to make money would be taken in.</p>
<p>Inej and Kaz stood out front for a minute studying the building. Out of habit, Inej planned how she would climb up or down the outside of the structure if she needed to. Who knew what Kaz was thinking about. They were both dressed farmer’s clothes and Kaz had left his cane and gloves back in Ketterdam. He looked supremely uncomfortable and kept curling his bare hands into his sleeves like he was trying to hide them. Inej thought about pointing it out but she didn’t think it was the sort of thing that would be noticeable to anyone but her. Under normal circumstances Kaz was mostly okay not wearing his gloves when it was just the two of them, but he still wore them when he was around others and especially when he was working. It would be interesting to see how he handled such a long period of time without them. Inej had seen him ditch the gloves for short periods of time when a job demanded it, but never for a long period of time. Unfortunately, Kaz’s mythos had spread outside of Ketterdam these days so there was no guarantee the people of Belendt wouldn’t know about the gloves.</p>
<p>“Well?” she asked when she thought they’d been studying the building for longer than would be considered reasonable. “Are we going in?”</p>
<p>Kaz took a deep breath, she saw him try to relax his hands. So, he was aware of the little things he did to ease his own discomfort. She wasn’t really surprised. Kaz had always been obsessed with the way he was viewed. She was fairly sure he couldn’t handle anyone realizing he had feelings under than greed and rage.</p>
<p>They walked up the neat front path to the door. Vaguely Inej was aware that if she and Kaz were supposed to be married they probably should have been holding hands. According to the backstory they’d built together before leaving Ketterdam, Sri and Mies Aben had only been married for a couple months and newlyweds tended to be a bit clingy. Still, that wasn’t going to happen with her and Kaz so they were going to be able to do that so it was going to have to work anyway. Inej had been suppressing her annoyance at Nina since that morning when she and Kaz had first seen the false IDs. She knew Nina well enough to know Nina had thought she was helping, but that didn’t mean Inej wasn’t mad. Her relationship with Kaz was complicated enough without other people trying to help.</p>
<p> The door was answered by a jolly-looking man who matched the description Kaz had given them for Van Schoorl. He had a big and visibly fake smile plastered on his face. “Hello, and welcome!” he said. “I’m Arnout Van Schoorl, and you are?”</p>
<p>So, this was the owner of the establishment. He must have been pretending to be friendly and attentive to gain their trust. Knowing that their success relied on this man not suspecting them, Inej gave him her biggest smile, pretending to be taken in. “I’m Sri Aben” she said. “This is my husband, Mies. Thank you so much for having us.”</p>
<p>“It’s very nice to meet you, sir,” Kaz said in a voice that was not his own, with a stranger’s smile on his face. Inej looked away. Kaz didn’t act very often, but watching him do it had always made her uncomfortable. It was like watching someone step out of their own skin and into someone else’s. “We’re extremely grateful for this opportunity.”</p>
<p>Kaz held his hand out for Van Schoorl to shake. Inej watched out of the corner of her eye. Even his posture was different. Still, she could tell he was bracing himself for Van Schoorl’s touch and he let go a bit sooner than the average person would have. Inej held out her hand to distract Van Schoorl, though she doubted anyone but her would have noticed.</p>
<p>“Classes will be starting tomorrow morning after breakfast,” Van Schoorl said when he’d released Inej’s hand. “Dinner will be served in an hour. Shall I show you to your room to get settled in before then?” Saints, he was laying it on thick. Inej could see how the average person with no knowledge of scams would be taken in.</p>
<p>“That would be great,” Kaz said, still smiling.</p>
<p>They followed Van Schoorl upstairs while he prattled on about the long and illustrious history of the School for Future Success. It was a little funny to listen to someone claim an institution had existed for two hundred years when you knew for a fact it hadn’t even existed six months ago, but Inej kept a straight face and so did Kaz. He was walking in a way Inej could tell was deliberately intended to make his limp seem less severe than it actually was. They’d come up with a story about a recent farm injury to explain his limp, but evidently, he intended for it not to seem that bad, possibly so no one questioned why he wasn’t using a cane.</p>
<p>The upstairs was just like every other hotel Inej had ever been in during all the spying she had done for Kaz. It was nicely decorated but all the doors were the same save for their numbers. There were probably larger suites on the floors above them. Van Schoorl kept up his steady chatter until he came to a stop outside one. “This is your room,” he said, fishing two keys out of his pocket and handing them over. For the first time Inej registered the singular word room. Her stomach clenched.</p>
<p>“As I said, Dinner is in an hour,” Van Schoorl said. “Would you like me to send someone to take you to the dining room?”</p>
<p>“I’m sure we can find it,” Kaz said. His voice was outwardly smooth but Inej knew him well enough to hear some tension. He was thinking the same thing she was. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”</p>
<p>“Don’t mention it,” Van Schoorl said. “I hope you enjoy your time here. Please get settled in. Don’t hesitate to ring the bell if you need anything.”</p>
<p>He headed off down the hall. Inej and Kaz watched him until he vanished around the corner before turning back to the doorway. Now that their mark was gone, the affable manner Kaz had put on was gone and he was back to his steely-faced self. He unlocked the door with his key and held it open for her, contorting his body so even their bags didn’t touch him as she slid by.</p>
<p>Inej stopped inside the room and studied it. It was a nice room. Not anywhere near as lavish as the Ketterdam Suite of the Geldrenner but that was to be excepted. Inej was willing to bet that if she asked Kaz would gladly point out all the fakes and shortcuts Van Schoorl had used to make the room look expensive without spending much money, but that didn’t change the fact that this was easily the nicest place Sri Aben—if she had actually existed—would have ever been.</p>
<p>Still knowing that the fictional person she was playing would be awed by the room did not stop Inej’s stomach from sinking. She wasn’t necessarily surprised, in fact she’d suspected this would be the case from the moment she’d recognized that Van Schoorl had said room not rooms.</p>
<p>There was only one bed in the room.</p>
<p>Kaz closed the door and she heard the small click as he locked it behind him. That was his habit born out of the kind of paranoia you only came by in the Barrel and normally it didn’t bother her, but now, in this room with the single bed it made her feel trapped, like the walls were closing in around her and she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to be locked in a room like this with any man, not even Kaz.</p>
<p>Obvious to her discomfort, Kaz stepped away from the door to stand next to her. His lips twisted as he studied the bed. “I’m going to kill Nina,” he announced.</p>
<p>Inej tried to laugh but all that came out was a small strangled sound.</p>
<p>Kaz paused and looked down at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.</p>
<p>She cleared her throat and managed to get the words out, “Unlock the door.”</p>
<p>For the briefest instant Kaz looked confused then his face cleared. “Oh, of course,” he said and turned away. She heard the door unlock and then he breezed past her, limping a bit more dramatically now that it was just the two of them to open the large windows which graced one side of the room. He swung them wide and pushed up the screens before backing away so he wasn’t standing between her and the windows. He set his bag on the dresser, and unzipped it, pretending not to have noticed anything amiss.</p>
<p>Inej almost melted into a puddle of relief on the floor. She and Kaz’s traumas weren’t the same, but they both had trauma and as a result it wasn’t exactly shocking new information to either of them when something unexpected caused a problem. To get one of the others to do what Kaz had just done would have required a lot of intrusive explanations. Kaz understood what was going on well enough to figure it out without having to be told, just like she knew to make sure he had his gloves and to get him away from people, especially crowds, when he was triggered.</p>
<p>“I can sleep on the floor,” Kaz said without turning to face her. His shoulders were tense. The idea of sharing a bed with her was as triggering for him as it was for her.</p>
<p>“Don’t play a being a gentleman, Kaz. We both know you’re not one,” she injected a levity she didn’t feel into her voice. “Plus, the floor will be terrible on your leg and you don’t even have your cane. I’ll sleep on the floor.”</p>
<p>Kaz finally turned to face her, leaning back against the dresser. He very pointedly did not look at the bed. “We both know you’re the selfless one of the pair of us,” he said. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor to prove it.”</p>
<p>“It wouldn’t be exactly on the floor,” she said. “This is a pretty nice carpet.” She drove her boot into the carpet to prove it.</p>
<p>Kaz raised an eyebrow. “If that’s the case then I don’t see why I can’t sleep on the floor.”</p>
<p>She groaned. “Fine, if you really want to sleep on the floor that badly we can take turns. Would that make you happy?”</p>
<p>Kaz thought about it for a moment. “As much as possible given the circumstances,” he admitted, then threw his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “I’m going to kill Nina,” he repeated.</p>
<p>“Not if I beat you to it,” Inej said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. (4)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Two chapters today because I didn't post one yesterday.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One of the most important parts of a job was knowing when to wait and scope things out. Fortunately, after so many years Kaz was a master at this. He gave himself a week to get used to the place and set the full particulars of his plan to take Van Schoorl down into stone. He was also hoping that this would give him enough time to figure out how to squeeze some profit out of this for the rest of the crew. It was becoming increasingly obvious that there were way too many people on the crew for this job and that made Kaz paranoid because he knew the others were smart enough to notice. The whole fragile story he’d built around why they were here depended on the others not asking too many questions because if they did it would quickly become obvious that they had no reason to be here.</p>
<p>The problems with the others weren’t the only thing holding things up. There was also the matter of Snijders to deal with. Getting Van Schoorl to face justice—Kaz snorted at the thought—wasn’t difficult. Unlike in Ketterdam, the government of Belendt actually cared about stopping scams that didn’t lose them any money. All Kaz had to do to send Van Schoorl to prison was report the School to the government as a scam. Given Van Schoorl already had one scam on his record he likely wouldn’t get out of prison on good behavior this time.</p>
<p>Snijders was more complicated. He’d made his career on making sure there was always someone to take the fall for him. If Kaz wanted him to face justice as well—and he was surprised to find that he actually did—he would have to find a way to fix things so the man couldn’t wiggle out of it. That would take time and a good deal of snooping around. Ideally Kaz would like to meet the man, but given Snijders built his safety around not being involved he didn’t rate his chances of having that opportunity very highly.</p>
<p>So, they were all in a holding pattern for the time being. There actually wasn’t that much time for snooping given how highly structured each day at the school was. “This is like high school,” Jesper had grumbled one night. “Someone telling you what to do every second of every day.” Kaz hadn’t attended school since age nine so he had no choice but to take Jesper’s word for it.</p>
<p>At first Kaz had thought that things were so structured to keep people from poking around and that lured him into a false sense of security about how easy this would be. Eventually he realized that the real reason for the tight schedule was that Van Schoorl didn’t want them to have free time to head out into the city. If you needed something from the city, Van Schoorl would send a worker for the school to get it for you, but you had to pay a fee for it. It was a clever side scam and one that so many of the other students fell for that they had to pretend to do so as well, which rankled; just because it was clever didn’t mean Kaz wanted to give his money to it.</p>
<p>The lessons themselves where a level of bullshit akin to the presentation on Zemeni oil futures Jesper had given as a distraction during the auction scheme. In fact, parts were so hilariously inaccurate even Kaz had a hard time keeping a straight face. The others had taken to gathering in each other’s rooms to laugh about the funniest bits before lights out. Kaz sometimes hung out with them, but he felt separated from them by the size of the scam he was pulling on them. He had lied through his teeth about why they were here and they were going to find out. They weren’t stupid, and he still hadn’t figured out how to generate a profit for them from this whole thing. He knew how to make sure they didn’t <em>lose</em> any money, but that wasn’t the same thing.</p>
<p>There were also the sleeping arrangements to contend with. He and Inej had been taking turns sleeping on the floor and while the carpeting was pretty soft as carpets went it was indeed as bad on his leg as Inej had said it would be. He didn’t want say anything though because Inej would try to force him to always take the bed and he wasn’t enough of a bastard for that.</p>
<p>Of course, a nasty part of him that always liked to point out how pathetic his problems were, pointed out, the simple fix would just be to share the bed. <em>“It’s a big bed. You wouldn’t even touch each other. Stop being such a coward,” </em>it sang. But  Kaz didn’t even want to think about it. Luckily, Inej didn’t seem to be considering it either, so at least they were united in their desire not to share a bed.</p>
<p>A week into their stay Kaz decided that the time had come for him to make a more active move. He waited until just before lights out while Inej was in the shower, before letting himself out of the room and sneaking along the hall. He wasn’t sure why he’d snuck out under Inej’s nose. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t understand what he was doing, but something about the secrets he was already keeping made him want to play <em>everything</em> close to his chest. He knew that was a bad decision because it would only make Inej more suspicious but he did it anyway.</p>
<p>Van Schoorl had claimed the hotel’s penthouse suite for himself, which was consistent with Kaz’s estimation of his personality. The easiest way up was by the staircase in the entryway, but Kaz had been doing his job for too long to make the mistake of doing things the easy way. Over the last week he’d poked his nose into all the unlocked doors in the whole hotel and quickly found the back staircase. All fancy hotels had one to keep the servants from being seen by the guests and they were a thief’s best friend.</p>
<p>This back staircase was even better than most because the penthouse suite took up the whole top floor which meant that the staircase ended inside the suite and Kaz didn’t have to navigate a lobby. He knew that Van Schoorl was still downstairs making his rounds of the rooms as he did every night, but it was still nice to not have to pull out the lockpicks.</p>
<p>The penthouse suite was set up roughly like every other penthouse suite Kaz had ever been in. It didn’t take him long to find the room Van Schoorl was using as an office. In reality it was just the suite’s dining room, but Van Schoorl had been eating downstairs with his “students” so obviously having the table uncluttered enough for food was not an issue.</p>
<p>Kaz began to pick through the drifts of papers and other knickknacks, keeping one eye on the clock. Over the last week he’d figured out how long it would take Van Schoorl to get to his and Inej’s room and he would need to make sure he was back downstairs by then. He knew Inej would cover for him even if she didn’t know where he was, but Van Schoorl liked to come into the room to chitchat so he might get suspicious anyways. The timeframe Kaz was on wouldn’t have been difficult at all if Van Schoorl kept his papers in any order, but since things were such a mess there was a chance he could dig through the mess the whole time and still never find anything useful.</p>
<p>There were a couple things he was hoping to find here. First, he wanted some indication of what exactly had landed Coos and Theo in a workhouse. He suspected that when a student money ran out Van Schoorl was selling them into indentures counting on them being too stupid to notice, but he needed to prove that if he wanted the Belendt government to forgive those indentures when they arrested Van Schoorl.</p>
<p> Snijders was another problem as well. He’d run many, many scams by making sure he took no blame if things went south. In fact, from what Kaz had read in his record back in Ketterdam, he’d sometimes managed to finagle things so he looked like a victim and got a payback from the government when the scams were discovered. If Van Schoorl went down without him he’d just go on to start another scam with someone else. Kaz needed to find a way to draw Snijders in and implicate him.</p>
<p>This whole plot and everything Kaz was doing for it was ridiculous. So ridiculous he couldn’t think about it too much or he felt like he was about to fall into a deep, dark pit where nothing made sense anymore. He was a thief, he was the biggest criminal in Ketterdam; why was he here of all places working to take down someone who hadn’t done anything he hadn’t done himself save for scamming children? It didn’t make sense. It was so far from his usual behavior that anyone who heard about it would think he’d lost his mind. Kaz wasn’t quite sure that he wouldn’t be better off giving up on this crazy justice plot and just finding a way to get a payoff for his crew and being done with it. It would be infinitely more logical and much less hypocritical.</p>
<p>But he didn’t want to do that. Somehow even knowing how insane this was he didn’t want to back off. He wanted Van Schoorl and Snijders to face whatever justice the world had—Kaz had lived in Ketterdam too long to think there was any real justice to be found in the Kerch court systems—and more importantly he wanted Coos and Theo to get their money back.</p>
<p>That meant he needed to find a way to lure Snijders to the school and incriminate him. That would not be easy because he was a very clever, but Kaz had outsmarted his fair share of clever adversaries so he wasn’t really worried about it. He was even less worried about it when he uncovered Van Schoorl’s typewriter under all the detritus. That was good. That made everything much easier.</p>
<p>Kaz glanced at the clock. Time was running short; he needed to get downstairs. He snatched up a couple letters written by Van Schoorl to study and stuffed them into his pocket before setting the suite back to the way he’d found it and heading back downstairs.</p>
<p>He was running a bit late so by the time he reached the hallway his and Inej’s room was in he could hear Van Schoorl through the open doorway of the room next to theirs saying his goodnights. He opened the door to their room silently and let himself inside.</p>
<p>“Where were you?” Inej asked. Even though she’d already bathed she was fully dressed in her day clothes. They’d never discussed it, but Kaz knew her well enough to know that Van Schoorl’s nightly rounds made her nervous.</p>
<p>“I was poking around in the penthouse suite,” Kaz said, kicking his boots off and nudging them under the bed to create the illusion that he been in the room the whole time.</p>
<p>“I could have come with you,” Inej said. “Or you could have at least told me where you were going. I came out of the bathroom and you were gone!”</p>
<p>“I—” Kaz began only to realize he had no idea what kind of excuse to give. Thankfully there was a knock on the door at that exact moment. Kaz held back a sigh of relief. He never thought he’d be <em>pleased</em> to have a second-rate scammer bothering him. “It’s open!” he called. Inej stepped away from the door and moved to put Kaz between her and the door. He moved forward a bit more to aid in that. She gave him a thin-lipped smile and he nodded slightly, it was all the acknowledgment they ever gave of the things they did to make things easier for each other.</p>
<p>The door opened and Van Schoorl let himself in. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Aben,” he said with his big fake smile—it was so bad Kaz often wondered if any of the other people at the School noticed or if they were just that oblivious. “How has the night been treating you?”</p>
<p>“Just fine, thank you,” Kaz said in his most polite and unassuming tone. “How about you?”</p>
<p>“Just fine,” Van Schoorl stepped further into the room and the door swung closed behind him. “You’ve been at the school for a week, how do you like it so far?”</p>
<p>Inej moved to sit on the windowsill which in turn gave Kaz permission to go sit on the bed. He tried not to look too relieved to sit down; the lack of his cane was not doing his leg any favors. He wished he would have left his boots on. He hadn’t been prepared for how off-balance and exposed interacting with his mark in just his socks would make him.</p>
<p>“It’s been very informative,” Kaz said. “We’ve learned to much.” He added a big smile for good measure. The expression wasn’t up to his usual standards, so it probably looked a little fake, but over the last week he’d quickly learned that Van Schoorl thought everyone was as bad an actor as he was; he wouldn’t notice.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Inej agreed.</p>
<p>“That’s good,” Van Schoorl said. He really was not a good actor, his smile looked so fake. “It’s always good to help hardworking people achieve their goals.”</p>
<p>“It’s so nice that you stop by every night to check that we’re doing well,” Inej said with a sincerity Kaz knew she didn’t feel. “It makes us feel so welcome.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Van Schoorl’s fake smile changed a little, perhaps a bit of legitimate emotion seeping into it. “That is the goal.”</p>
<p>Amateur.</p>
<p>They made awkward small talk for a few more minutes until Van Schoorl made his excuses and continued off on his rounds. When the door closed behind him and his steps retreated, Kaz and Inej both breathed a sigh of relief.</p>
<p>“He’s not very good at this,” Inej ventured, drawing her knees up to her chest.</p>
<p>“No, he’s not,” Kaz agreed, trying not to rub at his sore leg. Just because Inej knew him well enough to know that he really shouldn’t be spending this much time walking without his cane didn’t mean that he was comfortable making it obvious.</p>
<p>Inej pursed her lips. She was obviously thinking hard, but Kaz had made the mistake of allowing himself to be lulled into not particularly wondering what she was thinking about before she said, “Why are we here, Kaz?”</p>
<p>Kaz suppressed a flinch. “What do you mean? We’re here to con him.”</p>
<p>“I don’t believe you,” Inej said. “That man isn’t clever enough to require all of us to be here. What’s actually going on?”</p>
<p>“I’ve already told you what’s going on,” Kaz protested, though he knew it was too late. Inej wasn’t stupid.</p>
<p>“You know, I can tell when you’re lying, Kaz,” she said. “Tell me what’s actually going on.”</p>
<p>It was tempting to just tell her and get it over with, but that was unacceptable. “There’s nothing actually going on,” he said.</p>
<p>He didn’t know why he was bothering. He could get her to drop the conversation, but it wasn’t like she was going to forget about it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. (5)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Something about this doesn’t add up,” Jesper said.</p><p>Wylan looked up from the puzzle pieces strewn across the carpeting of Nina and Matthias’s room and frowned. “What do you mean? Are you missing pieces?” There wasn’t much to do for recreation at the school save for a bunch of mediocre puzzles. A few days before Nina had invented a game she called Speed Puzzling, where they all raced to build their own puzzle. It had quickly become their main evening activity. Wylan, Jesper and Nina were currently in the middle of a match. Matthias professed to hate puzzles so he was manning the stopwatch.</p><p>“Not about the game,” Jesper said sounding a bit annoyed. “About this job. There’s something Kaz hasn’t told us.”</p><p>There was a long pause, then Matthias stopped the stopwatch with a click and set it aside. “So…” he ventured. “Does that mean we’re actually going to talk about this?”</p><p>“We have to,” Jesper said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but something about this job has felt off to me since the beginning. I’d figured that there was another layer to the whole thing that Kaz would tell us when we got here, but that hasn’t happened.”</p><p>“I agree,” Nina said. “I’d gotten the impression that something wasn’t right when Kaz explained this, but I wasn’t sure if I was just making things up or not. It’s good to know you noticed the same thing.”</p><p>“He’s lying to us about something,” Matthias agreed.</p><p>“I…” Wylan paused and tried to get his thoughts to line up. “I agree that Kaz has been acting strange, but what makes you so sure he’s lying about something?”</p><p>“This job is too simple,” Jesper explained. “Kaz wouldn’t normally bother with it in Ketterdam, let alone travel to a whole different city and drag all of us along too. The Ice Court is the only time I’ve ever known him to leave Ketterdam for literally anything. He doesn’t like leaving the sphere of knowledge and influence he and Inej have built up over the years. There’s no logical reason he would come all the way out here for a job with so little payout.”</p><p>Wylan wanted to argue that there was no way Kaz would lie to them, but he knew Kaz Brekker well enough to know that he likely didn’t care about lying to them. He sighed. “Do you have any idea what it is he’s lying about?”</p><p>“That’s what’s really confusing about this whole thing,” Jesper said blowing out an annoyed breath. “I have no idea. It’s not like I necessarily expect to be able to tell what his angle is all the time, but this one is really opaque. I can’t see any value in us being here. I’ve studied everyone here and there’s no one worth conning. I’m not sure there’s any notable amount of money in this ‘school’ at all. If the actual target is out in Belendt somewhere, I’m not sure why he hasn’t told us what’s going on yet.”</p><p>“He dragged us all out here and now he’s treating this like a one-person job,” Nina agreed. “I’m getting sick of it.”</p><p>“Do you think Inej knows?” Matthias ventured.</p><p>Jesper shrugged. “I have no idea. If anyone knows it’s her, but that’s different than saying she actually knows.”</p><p>“I mean, we could just ask her,” Nina said. “If she doesn’t know we’re not out anything and if she does asking her won’t go over anywhere near as badly as asking Kaz would.”</p><p>Somehow, despite never actually discussing it, they all found themselves trundling out the door and heading for the room Kaz and Inej were sharing. They were quick and quiet in the hallways, because just because they could nominally go wherever they wanted in the hotel didn’t mean that walking around after dinner was necessarily encouraged—when Jesper had first learned about this he’d muttered about it really feeling like school now.</p><p>Nina knocked sharply on the door to Kaz and Inej’s room and after a moment Inej opened the door and peaked out. “Hi, Inej,” Nina said. “Is Kaz here?”</p><p>Inej gave her a look. “I don’t know where <em>Mies</em> is,” she said putting a lot of emphasis on Kaz’s fake name.</p><p>“Good,” Jesper said brightly. “Can we come in?”</p><p>Inej looked a little taken aback, but then she stepped aside. “Sure, just remember that Van Schoorl will be doing his creepy rounds to check we’re all where we’re supposed to be soon.”</p><p>“We remember,” Jesper said. “But we need to talk first.”</p><p>Inej closed the door after them and then crossed her arms and leaned back against it. “Alright, so since you came here asking where Kaz is and then said you wanted to talk to me, I take this to mean you have something you want to talk about specifically with me without Kaz being around.”</p><p>“Basically,” Matthias admitted.</p><p>“Do you know what Kaz hasn’t told us?” Jesper asked.</p><p>There was a long pause. Wylan watched Inej open and close her mouth several times. His stomach sank. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d wanted Kaz to have changed since they’d invaded the Ice Court. It was hard to realize that he was still refusing to trust them with important things.</p><p>“What didn’t he tell us, Inej?” Nina pushed when it became obvious that Inej wasn’t going to say anything.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been trying to convince him to tell me what he’s actually planning since he first suggested this scheme but he’s not budging.”</p><p>As much as Wylan hadn’t wanted Kaz to be up to something at all, he found the idea that Kaz was actually up to something and that Inej didn’t know what it was even worse. “But he always tells you everything,” he protested.</p><p>“Not always,” Inej said. “I’m just good at filling in the blanks, but I’m out of touch with the goings on in Ketterdam these days. I can only assume that if I wasn’t I’d be able to figure out what’s going on.”</p><p>“You don’t suppose he’s planning to scam us out of our money, do you?” Matthias ventured.</p><p>“Why would he do that?” Wylan asked.</p><p>Jesper shrugged. “It’s possible, I guess, though once you’ve already got a couple million <em>kruge</em> to invest there are definitely easier ways to make another 30 million which don’t involve pissing off your former crew members. Plus, nothing we’ve done here would give him access to our money beyond what he already has from laundering it and getting it to us after the Ice Court job. All our fees to hang out in this ‘school’ so far have come from the Dregs’ coffers: it’s his money not ours.”</p><p>“Whatever he’s planning I don’t think he’s trying to scam <em>us</em>,” Inej said. “He has to realize we won’t fall for it. He knows I know he’s hiding something, for a start. Plus, we could get back at him if he did scam us. The Merchant Council and the <em>stadwatch </em>both suspect that Kaz had something to do with Kuwei’s ‘death’ and Van Eck and Pekka Rollins’s downfalls, but they can’t prove it. Any one of us could give them the background information necessary to make Kaz hang for that scheme and he knows it.”</p><p>“I grant you your point,” Matthias said. “But the auction scheme is far from the only thing Kaz has ever done which the Merchant Council could hang him for. The only reason he hasn’t gone to prison recently is because no one can catch him.”</p><p>“True,” Inej said. “But one of us could also help with that.”</p><p>“I guess,” Matthias said. “But if Kaz probably isn’t scamming us, that still begs the question of who he is scamming. It’s not like he’s here for the classes.” He let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort.</p><p>“Yeah,” Inej said. “I suppose he really could be scamming Van Schoorl. I did some poking around and this school isn’t necessarily making bad money for a small-time criminal. It’s just that Kaz’s preferred level of payout is normally higher than anything we could get out of this.”</p><p>Jesper hissed air out between his teeth. “There’s something else going on,” he said. “There’s something we’re missing.”</p><p>“I know,” Inej said.</p><p>They faded into silence. They’d reached an impasse and they all knew it. They all knew Kaz was up to something and none of them were sure if they actually wanted to do something about it. Things had been better between them and Kaz, at least ostensibly, since the auction scheme. Wylan knew he’d considered Kaz a real friend and as far as he knew the others had as well. They’d all thought that Kaz did the same, but this was making it look like that wasn’t the case.</p><p>Wylan wanted to hold onto hope. Maybe they were mistaken. Maybe Kaz had just misjudged the payout of this job. But hope was hard to hold onto. He knew Kaz well enough to know that Kaz wouldn’t have misjudged something like this. Kaz had brought them here for a reason and whatever that reason was he didn’t want to tell them.</p><p>There was a soft knock on the door. Not a normal knock like Wylan would have expected from Van Schoorl but one with a careful rhythm. It was one of the coded knocks they’d come up with before leaving Ketterdam. “Come in,” Inej called, though it wasn’t really necessary because the door was already opening and like he’d been summoned like the demon he claimed to be, Kaz stepped the room.</p><p>He paused at the sight of them all congregated in the room without him, but his expression barely changed. Somehow, despite knowing how good an actor and liar Kaz was, Wylan was always surprised by that. “Am I missing something?” Kaz asked after a bare second, tone mild as if he was asking about the weather.</p><p>Next to Wylan, Jesper took a deep breath like he was about to leap off a boat into rough water. “Actually, Kaz, we were talking about you.”</p><p>It was hard to pinpoint exactly what changed about Kaz’s manner, though something definitely did. His gaze slid over them all, calculating, before finding its way back to Jesper. “Alright,” he said calmly. “What about me?</p><p>Despite himself, Wylan was intimidated. He could tell that Matthias and Nina were too. Only Jesper and Inej looked unruffled. The visible demonstration of which of them were afraid of Kaz and which weren’t was a bit unexpected.</p><p>“You’re lying to us about this mission,” Inej said, clipped and businesslike. “Tell us the truth or we’re done.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. (6)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kaz’s Dirtyhands mythos rested on a number of illusions which he’d gotten everyone to buy into over the years. He had a ton of experience with the concept after so many years but he’d never been able to decide if it was harder to get people to buy into your mythos or to keep your mythos going once you’d developed it.</p>
<p>Actually, he did know the answer. Keeping the thing going was harder, because you got to build your mythos before you were notable. Once it was built, people were watching and if you messed up everyone would know.</p>
<p>One of Kaz’s illusions was the fact that it was impossible to surprise him, impossible to make him nervous. As far as the Dirtyhands mythos went, Kaz Brekker was never nervous, his heart never raced.</p>
<p>The real issue with having a mythos was that they were just illusions. As nice as it would be if he never got nervous that wasn’t actually possible.</p>
<p>All this to say, Kaz’s heart was racing and he hated it. He wasn’t dumb and he wasn’t even really surprised that this was happening. He’d been courting this moment since he’d decided to bring the rest into this situation and he’d known it so he wasn’t surprised, but that was different than saying that he was alright with being in this situation.</p>
<p>It was also different than saying that he was going to immediately admit to what he’d actually been doing.</p>
<p>“And what am I supposed to be lying about?” he asked, his voice cold as wind blowing off the harbor during the winter. After so many years of practice, his expression didn’t change either.</p>
<p>Jesper groaned and buried his head in his hands. “What the fuck, Kaz? How hard would it actually be to just be honest for once in your life?”</p>
<p>Kaz raised an eyebrow.</p>
<p>“Do not give me that look.” Jesper said, pointing at finger at Kaz without lifting his head.</p>
<p>“You’re not even looking at me,” Kaz said.</p>
<p>“I don’t have to. I know you, Kaz.” Jesper said. “Which, incidentally, is how I know there’s something about this job that you’re hiding from us.”</p>
<p>Kaz opened his mouth, preparing to deny something, though he wasn’t sure if he was doing to deny hiding something or deny that Jesper knew him.</p>
<p>“Don’t,” Inej said.</p>
<p>“Don’t what?”</p>
<p>She just raised her eyebrows. “Don’t lie,” she said. “You’ve done nothing but lie since before we got here. I want to know the truth. We all want to know the truth.”</p>
<p>“You already know the—” Kaz began but Inej cut him off.</p>
<p>“No,” she said. “No more. Tell us what’s going on or we will walk. And no, I’m not bluffing.”</p>
<p>They stared at each other for a few long minutes. She wasn’t bluffing, Kaz could tell she wasn’t and if she left the others would too. Perhaps he should let them leave. After all, he shouldn’t have brought them in the first place, but he knew that calling their bluff and letting them leave would only make things worse in the long run. He’d die before admitting it, but he valued his relationship with this crew and if he let them walk away now they would be gone forever.</p>
<p>He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he said, and told them.</p>
<p>He wasn’t exhaustive in his telling—Inej was the only one who knew Jordie had even existed and he didn’t think he’d be able to get that part of the story out even if he’d wanted to tell it—but he told them about how Coos and Theo had come to him begging for help and how he’d agreed to help. When he finished there was a long and uncomfortable silence.</p>
<p>“Well?” he asked when he couldn’t stand it anymore.</p>
<p>Jesper whistled. “Holy shit, Kaz, is this altruism?”</p>
<p>Kaz glared, though he couldn’t necessarily argue with Jesper’s point. He wasn’t sure what else to call what he was doing here other than altruism.</p>
<p>“So why haven’t you ended this yet?” Jesper asked. “You must have all the dirt possible on Van Schoorl by this point.”</p>
<p>“Snijders needs to go down too,” Kaz said, “But he isn’t in Belendt.”</p>
<p>“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of a way around that, <em>demjin</em>,” Matthias said.</p>
<p>Kaz sighed. “I do. Van Schoorl has a typewriter in the penthouse upstairs. I’m not a good enough forger to write a whole letter in Van Schoorl’s hand, but I can type up a letter that sounds like he wrote it and then forge his signature. I can tell Snijders that something’s come up and he needs to come to Belendt to deal with it. If I make it sound urgent enough he should come.”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t explain how we’re going to implicate him in all this, though,” Nina said. “You said yourself that Snijders makes his living wiggling out of these sorts of things.”</p>
<p>“She’s right,” Matthias said. “Why can’t you just forge a bunch of letters from Snijders talking about his role?”</p>
<p>“Van Schoorl doesn’t have any letters from Snijders,” Kaz said. “He either only hears from him in emergencies or he burns the letters after reading them. Without examples of Snijders’s writing I can’t write something that sounds enough like him that it will hold up in court.”</p>
<p>“That’s a fair point,” Inej said. “But how do you plan to get Snijders in court if we can’t forge evidence?”</p>
<p>Kaz didn’t miss the word “we.” He tried to ignore how much better it made him feel. He crossed to the dresser and pulled out a newspaper. He’d been paying Van Schoorl for the paper every morning which was a waste of money but had eventually paid off. He folded the paper over to a specific page and handed it to Inej. She scanned it, eyebrows raising. “Yeah, that would work,” she said. “Assuming you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.”</p>
<p>Jesper leaned forward trying to glimpse the paper. “What is it?” Inej handed it to him and he read it quickly. A grin spread across his face. “Oh, Kaz, this will be great!”</p>
<p>Kaz couldn’t completely contain his smile.</p>
<p>Jesper handed the paper to Matthias and Nina and related the contents to Wylan quietly.</p>
<p>“If we do this plan the one thing I can’t guarantee,” Kaz said slowly, since it had to be said now. “Is that any of you will ever see any kind of payment. You might, but it will be up to the Belendt courts so it could be months or years from now.”</p>
<p>It looked like Matthias was going to respond, but then there was a knock at the door. They all froze.</p>
<p>“Van Schoorl,” Nina breathed.</p>
<p>They’d forgotten the nightly rounds.</p>
<p>There weren’t necessarily any rules against friendships with other people at the school, but Kaz had gotten the impression that Van Schoorl would prefer if there weren’t friendships, probably because he didn’t want to risk people helping each other with money or figuring out what was actually going on at the school. Even if that wasn’t the case, it would be bad for them to be connected in Van Schoorl’s head once all this was over.</p>
<p>Kaz was about to tell the others to hide in the bathroom when the door opened and Van Schoorl came in. This was the first time he’d ever come in without waiting for them to invite him in. He was visibly worried and somehow managed to look both relieved and even more worried at the same time when he saw the others in Kaz and Inej’s room.</p>
<p>“Oh, there you all are,” he said. It took Kaz a minute to realize he was talking to the others not to him and Inej. The other Crows’ rooms were earlier in Van Schoorl’s rounds than Kaz and Inej’s was. He had already noticed that they were gone and probably had people looking for them.</p>
<p>“Can we do something for you, Mr. Van Schoorl?” Nina asked, just a little bit cocky.</p>
<p>“The four of you are in violation of curfew,” Van Schoorl said in a pompous and slightly uneasy tone of voice. He sounded like someone trying to exercise authority they didn’t feel they had. “I ask you to please return to your rooms now.”</p>
<p>Matthias, Nina and Jesper all got up without comment, but Kaz had to give Wylan a look to get him to obey. It was amazing how green the merchling still was after everything.</p>
<p>Van Schoorl watched the others until the door swung closed behind them like he was afraid they were going to pull one over on him and stay in the room. Once the door was closed behind them he turned back to Kaz and Inej. “You know that there’s a curfew,” he said in an accusing tone. “You’ve been here for long enough.”</p>
<p>“We know,” Kaz said, trying to sound harmless. As far as he knew this was the first time Van Schoorl had ever noticed them as more than just sources of money. That was bad because they had just been planning to sell his whole operation out. They didn’t want Van Schoorl to actually remember them when that happened.</p>
<p>“It won’t happen again,” Inej said. “We just got to talking about what you said in class this afternoon and lost track of time.”</p>
<p>Kaz watched Van Schoorl be torn between flattered that people were interested in his bullshit and terrified that they might have realized it was bullshit. “Still,” he said. “Curfew must be obeyed.”</p>
<p>“We won’t do it again,” Kaz promised.</p>
<p>“I will remember this,” Van Schoorl said. “It will be your first strike. If something like this happens again, I will expel you from the school.”</p>
<p>It took another twenty minutes to calm Van Schoorl enough that he finally left. Kaz probably should have been relieved but Van Schoorl leaving meant that he and Inej were alone which meant that he had to face her, which he didn’t really want to do.</p>
<p>When he finally worked up the guts to look at her she was watching him with the look she got when she was thinking very hard. “What?” he asked, trying to get her to make the first move.</p>
<p>Inej frowned, deep and visible, before she decided what to say. “Do they remind you of you and your brother?”</p>
<p>The mention of Jordie was jarring. Inej knew some of it, but Kaz had never been able to get himself to tell her all of it. He’d tried a couple times, never obviously enough that Inej would have noticed, but he’d tried. He couldn’t get the truth of what had happened with the Reaper’s Barge to come out, and he wasn’t sure if that would ever change.</p>
<p>When he didn’t immediately respond, Inej went on. “You can say they do, Kaz. I won’t judge you.”</p>
<p>“They do,” he said.</p>
<p>“Thank you for telling me,” she said.</p>
<p>The tone of voice that suggested she was trying to reward him for the honestly in a way that would make him more likely to be honest in the future. He was annoyed, but also surprised to find himself going on anyway, “When I was younger I was almost as angry that no one bothered to save us as I was at Pekka Rollins in the first place, which is ridiculous, what more would I have expected?”</p>
<p>“Someone to help you, like you’re doing now,” Inej said. “Caring about other people isn’t something to be ashamed of, Kaz.”</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure how to respond of to that.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. (7)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next night Kaz and Inej went back to their room right on time and pretended not to notice the guard who was now stationed at the end of the hall. They sat through a long visit with a visibly on edge Van Schoorl and then turned the lights off immediately after he left.</p>
<p>Then they waited. Kaz sat in a chair and Inej perched on the bed and they sat in the dark. They didn’t want to speak for fear of being overheard—the guard had stalked down the hallway to stand outside their door after Van Schoorl had left—plus they hadn’t really been talking to each other much since the night before anyway.</p>
<p>They waited as the school fell silent around them. They could hear the guard shuffling outside every once and while. He either wasn’t very good at his job or he’d been instructed to make sure they knew they were being watched. Kaz was sure he could figure out if he wanted to, but he had other things to worry about.</p>
<p>They waited a few more hours, then got to work. They left the lights off as they began to move quietly around the room, but they were both used to working in darkness. Kaz made sure the door was locked, though he doubted that would stop Van Schoorl if he was truly determined to check on them. Inej crossed to the one of the windows, threw back the curtains and pushed up the window. She’d checked all the windows to figure out which was the most silent was so there was no noise. Cool night air filled the room. Belendt smelled better than Ketterdam did and it still struck Kaz as strange.</p>
<p>He limped across the room, not bothering to try to hide the limp now that it was just him and Inej. When he reached her he wished he had tried to hide it from the look on her face. “Are you sure you can make it down?” she asked, so quietly he was more reading her lips than hearing her.</p>
<p>“Of course, I can,” he replied just as quietly. “You’ve seen me make harder climbs than this.”</p>
<p>“True, but normally you haven’t been without your cane for weeks. Your limp has gotten worse since we’ve been here, Kaz.”</p>
<p>Kaz didn’t doubt it. He needed the cane at lot more than he tried to let on and after so long without it he was feeling it’s absence. Still, that didn’t change the reality of what needed to be done tonight. “I’ll be fine,” he said.</p>
<p>Inej gave him a doubtful look but climbed out of the window without another comment. Kaz watched from the window as she made her way quickly and quietly down. He kept careful track of the way she did it. He was capable of finding his own way down, but if you had the opportunity to learn from the Wraith you better take it.</p>
<p>When Inej reached the bottom, he worked himself up onto the windowsill and swung himself outside. There was a handy little ledge to stand on while he worked the window mostly closed and then he started down.</p>
<p>It was…bad…to say the least. Every twist and bit of pressure on his bad leg sent a spear of pain through him from his ankle all the way up to his back. He ended up having to muscle his way down mostly by upper body strength and by the time he reached the ground his teeth were gritted and his face was wet with sweat.</p>
<p>“You alright?” Inej asked, her piercing gaze visible even in the near darkness.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Kaz said through his teeth. He pushed away from the wall, trying to ignore his leg’s screaming. “Let’s move.”</p>
<p>~~~~</p>
<p>Thankfully, they weren’t far from their destination. There was an art gallery just down the street. A single guard stood outside the front door and all the windows were dark. Kaz and Inej approached through an alley and Kaz picked the lock on one of the windows and they climbed inside.</p>
<p>The art gallery was a repurposed house and they didn’t have the advantage of the recognizance that Kaz would normally have relied for a job like this, but they would have to make do. They split up to search more efficiently and after a few minutes Inej was back mouthing that she’d found the door to the basement. Kaz picked the lock on the basement door and they headed downstairs, Inej shaking the bonelight she’d procured especially for this purpose.</p>
<p>The basement was full of carefully stored paintings and other pieces of artwork. The article Kaz had found in the paper had been about the art gallery and one of the people who had been interviewed had mentioned the gallery having as many paintings in storage in the basement as on display. That basement was the perfect place to stage a robbery you didn’t want discovered for a few days.</p>
<p>They hadn’t come to Belendt prepared to carry out an art heist, but between them and the other Crows they’d been able to come up with a pair of large, dark-colored bags which would serve their purposes tonight. They weren’t going after enough paintings to make this worth their time and money; they just needed enough to get someone arrested for theft.</p>
<p>Kaz wasn’t going to win any prizes for being an art critic, but he could roughly judge the value of a painting well enough to only steal valuable things, which was all that was necessary for this part of the job. He and Inej packed their bags full of paintings and then crept out of the gallery and back into the sweet-smelling Belendt night. They hurried back to the school and then there was the climb back up to their room to deal with.</p>
<p>Going back up was even worse than coming down, both from the added weight of the full bag and the fact that it was a lot harder to keep weight off his leg while going up. The climb took an eternity and Kaz was literally shaking with pain by the time he managed to haul himself in through the window and collapse onto the floor. He lay on the floor for what felt like an eternity, biting his tongue to keep from making a sound.</p>
<p>“Kaz,” Inej said quietly, pulling him out of his private world of pain. “Can you make it to the bed?”</p>
<p>He swallowed hard and managed to lift his head a little to look at her. “It’s your night for the bed.”</p>
<p>“Yes, well I’m not the one currently curled up in an agonized ball on the floor,” Inej said. “Sleeping on the floor is not helping your leg at all. Come on, Kaz, let’s get you into bed.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” he said, the beginnings of a snarl creeping into his voice.</p>
<p>“No, you’re not,” Inej said. “This isn’t okay, Kaz, don’t you dare try to pretend it is.”</p>
<p>“I’m not going to take the bed,” Kaz growled. “It’s your night, Wraith.”</p>
<p>“Then we can share it,” Inej said.</p>
<p>Kaz froze. “What?”</p>
<p>Inej froze as well. Kaz suspected she hadn’t really thought it through before she said it. He waited for her to take it back, but after a moment she took a fortifying breath and lifted her chin. “You heard me.”</p>
<p>He didn’t want to do this, he didn’t even want to be thinking it, but something about the way Inej held herself dared him to refuse. “<em>I’m willing to do this,” </em>her posture seemed to demand. <em>“You better be willing too.”</em></p>
<p>“Fine,” he said. Inej nodded curtly and headed off towards the bathroom, maybe to wash her face and brush her teeth.</p>
<p>Kaz wasn’t capable of standing right now so he had to crawl to the bed. It was humiliating, and he was glad Inej was in the bathroom and couldn’t see it.</p>
<p>When he made it to the bed, he hauled himself up onto it and sat there for a minute, panting. When his breathing began to settle, he stripped off his coat and tossed it across the room in the direction of the chair, it landed half on half off of one of the arms which was good enough he supposed.</p>
<p>He stared down at his boots for a few minutes, bracing himself for what needed to happen next. Normally when his leg got like this he just slept in his boots, but he couldn’t do that in a hotel as nice as this one and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Inej to take his boots off for him. When he’d braced himself enough he began. He did his good leg first because that one was easier then gritted his teeth and lifted his bad leg.</p>
<p>He was still blinking tears of pain out of his eyes when the bathroom door opened and Inej came back into the room. She hadn’t actually changed into pajamas and was visibly containing her nervousness. “Do you want to get into the bathroom?” she asked.</p>
<p>He shook his head.</p>
<p>“Do you want me to see if we have some painkillers hidden away somewhere?” Inej said. “Nina might have brought something.”</p>
<p>Kaz shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”</p>
<p>Inej pursed her lips, obviously disagreeing, but Kaz pushed himself back along the bed and lay down with his back against the wall. He normally slept with his back against the wall, but tonight that meant that he would also have to be facing Inej. He wasn’t sure if that would make it worse or better, but even if he could have his back exposed while sleeping, he couldn’t lay on his bad side right now anyway. He curled up on his side watching Inej. He was glad they’d worn gloves during their excursion to the gallery; he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do this without gloves. Inej had left hers on as well, obviously thinking the same thing.</p>
<p> Slowly, like she had to force herself to preform every movement, Inej climbed into the bed and pulled the blankets over her legs. She didn’t lay down, but sat there, hugging her knees, her whole body rigid. Kaz didn’t move either. He could barely breathe. He and Inej had definitely been closer than this before, many, many times. They’d even slept closer than this before, but that had been on hard wooden floors wrapped in their own bedrolls. Somehow, the fact that they were both in the same bed was different, so much worse. He swallowed the taste of the harbor in his mouth and tried to push back the water lapping at his ankles.</p>
<p>After a few minutes, Inej took a deep breath like she was about to dive underwater, then she lay down and rolled over to face him. They stared at each other over about two feet of mattress, sheets and blankets, the air filled with their collective terror.</p>
<p>“Well,” Inej said after a minute, her words catching awkwardly in her throat. Her fear was almost unsettling. Kaz was used to presenting himself as stoic and impossible to frighten, but he hadn’t realized he’d attributed the same feelings to Inej. “Neither of us has died yet.”</p>
<p>They both started laughing. It was tense, hysterical laughter, but it still cut some of the tension.</p>
<p>The laughter faded and they were staring again. “You know,” Kaz ventured, “if love stories are to be believed this is the point where our repressed passions overtake us and we’re fixed and live happily ever after.”</p>
<p>There was a long pause while they both mulled that.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it works that way,” Inej finally said.</p>
<p>“Neither do I,” Kaz agreed.</p>
<p>Silence fell again, but it was calmer now. The crest of the panic was over. Kaz could hear the water lapping in the back of mind, but it was far enough off that he didn’t think it was going to rush over his head and drown him. Slowly, he worked one of his hands out from under his body and lay it on the bed between them, palm upwards. If he’d been truly brave, he might have taken the glove off, but that would be pushing it and he didn’t want to risk it.</p>
<p>Inej’s eyes shifted from his face to his hand and then back, then she slid her hand across the blankets and lay it on top of Kaz’s.</p>
<p>They lay together breathing, until the panic crested again and it started to seem like things were going to be okay again. Kaz laced his fingers through Inej’s and she smiled quietly. Neither of them said anything, but there was nothing to say. They just lay there, together, and that was it. Nothing terrible happened. They were safe.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. (8)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took another week and a half for their plans to fall together. Kaz sent a couple letters to Snijders pretending to be Van Schoorl, talking of urgent issues which required his attention. They kept a close eye on the mail, but Snijders didn’t respond. The others worried that Snijders would simply leave Van Schoorl to fend for himself and not come to help, and if Kaz was honest he was worried too, but it wouldn’t do to show that to the others. The fact that Snijders wasn’t responding wasn’t necessarily proof that he wasn’t going to act. It was possible he was just avoiding responding so there was no paper trail tying him to Van Schoorl. The lack of response made it easier to keep Van Schoorl from realizing someone was sending letters to his accomplice pretending to be him as well. However, since they had never heard anything back from Snijders, they had no way of knowing for sure that he was coming until he showed up at the school.</p>
<p>That happened a week and a half after Kaz and Inej had pilfered the art gallery. They were in their afternoon class when a cart pulled up front and one of the school’s workers rushed in to announce that a Snijders was out front demanding to speak to Van Schoorl right this instant.</p>
<p>Kaz was pleased that they’d been in class when this had happened because the look of terror on Van Schoorl’s face alone was almost worth all the trouble that this job had caused. It took Van Schoorl a few minutes to overcome his panic enough to speak. When he did he handed the class over to one of the other “professors” and rushed out of the classroom to meet Snijders in the drive. In the midst of this brief confusion, Kaz and Inej snuck out of the classroom and hurried back to their room.</p>
<p>They’d been hiding the stolen paintings in the dresser drawers under their clothes where the maids didn’t look when they cleaned. Their robbery had been discovered a few days before, which was actually good because if the theft hadn’t been discovered they would have had to report it for the plan to actually work.</p>
<p>Neither of them spoke while Kaz divided the paintings into three bags. They hadn’t been doing much talking recently, not since the night where their raided the gallery, like neither of them was quite sure what to say. They had continued sharing the bed, however. After the first night it was a bit easier. Not <em>easy</em>, and they still couldn’t manage more than holding hands, but there was less blind panic than there had been the first time.</p>
<p>Once the bags were loaded, Kaz handed two to Inej and swung the last one over his shoulders. “You remember what you need to do?”</p>
<p>She smiled. “Yes, I remember, Kaz. I always do. We’ve been working together for how long?”</p>
<p>Kaz smiled. “Just run like the wind and don’t get caught, Wraith,” Kaz said and he left the room.</p>
<p>There were two more moving parts to the plan which had to be handled. Firstly, the stolen paintings had to be planted both in Snijders’s carriage and in Van Schoorl’s office. Then the <em>stadwatch</em> had to be tipped off. They’d decided that Inej was the best choice for planting the paintings in Snijders’s carriage and then running to the <em>stadwatch </em>because she could quickly scale the side of the building and run in ways Kaz couldn’t. Kaz would handle Van Schoorl’s office.</p>
<p>Not sleeping on the floor had helped his leg some, but there was only so much that could be done without use of his cane. He gritted his teeth against the pain and hauled himself up the servant’s staircase to Van Schoorl’s penthouse suite.</p>
<p>In the days that they’d been waiting for Snijders to take the bait, he’d scoped out Van Schoorl’s suite to find the ideal place to plant the paintings. This was not the first time that Kaz had framed someone for a theft, so he knew how to find the perfect place. The trick was finding a place which was hidden enough that it looked like the items weren’t meant to be found, but obvious enough that they could be easily found.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Van Schoorl didn’t know about that little trick, so earlier in the week Kaz had found a trunk in the bedroom which contained extra sheets for the bed. The maids probably looked in there, but the paintings wouldn’t need to be hidden that long. Kaz lifted the sheets out, careful not to disturb their perfect folds—he didn’t have the level of folding skills necessary to get them to look like that again—and lay the bag containing the paintings inside before replacing the sheets. He closed the chest quietly and that was that. The evidence was planted. Now all he needed to do was get back to the classroom and wait for Inej to finish her part of the plan.</p>
<p>The main door of the suite opened.</p>
<p>Kaz reacted without thinking. He wasn’t in immediate sight from the door—the bedroom was accessed through the dining room or through a hallway which lead back the servant’s stairway—but the door to the servant’s stairway was. He couldn’t risk making for the door while whoever had just opened the door was in the parlor, so he rolled under the bed and lay on his stomach, his cheek pressed to the carpeting, staring out between the legs of the bed through the open door to the dining room. He’d come in that way. He cursed himself. The door to the hallway was closed. He would have to get it open to escape.</p>
<p>Whoever had come in was actually two someones and they were arguing. After a moment Kaz recognized Van Schoorl’s voice, the other person was not someone he knew so it must be Snijders. He hardly dared to breathe.</p>
<p>“I’m very frustrated by this act, Van Schoorl,” Snijders said. Unlike Van Schoorl he had the sort of commanding voice you expected from people involved in cons where they pretended to have authority they lacked. “I was frustrated by your repeated letters to start with, but the repeated insisting that you didn’t send them is even worse.”</p>
<p>“But I <em>didn’t</em> send them,” Van Schoorl said, his voice just this side of whiny. “Your instructions to avoid contact with you were very clear, I would never had broken them.”</p>
<p>“Strange given I have received numerous letters from you recently doing exactly that.”</p>
<p>Neither of them seemed to have yet considered the possibility that someone else had sent the letters, though Kaz was sure it was only a matter of time. Snijders seemed smart even to smell the rat and Van Schoorl was getting to the point where a person would say anything to get out of trouble.</p>
<p>The two men stepped through the open doorway from the parlor to the dining room and Kaz got his first glimpse of Snijders. He was tall and thin and dressed in stoic mercher black. He looked like an older version of Kaz himself. He had Van Schoorl pinned with a gaze of pure murder which had Van Schoorl quaking in his boots.</p>
<p>“You have to believe me,” Van Schoorl begged. “I’m not lying. I didn’t—”</p>
<p>He didn’t get the rest of his plea out because at that moment a chorus of whistles sounded from outside, floating in through the suite’s open windows. <em>Stadwatch</em> whistles. Inej had finished her part of the plan. Even having known they were coming, however, Kaz’s stomach still lurched. He had no love for the <em>stadwatch </em>even if they were unwittingly doing his bidding today.</p>
<p>Van Schoorl and Snijders ran to the dining room windows to see what the commotion was about. This took them out of sight of the bedroom. Kaz took advantage of their distraction and rolled out from under the bed. He scrambled to his feet, headless of the way his leg protested and reached the closed door to the hallway. He eased it open, slid through and shut it just as Snijders started shouting. It was time to move.</p>
<p>He made for the servant’s stairs and as soon as he reached their comforting darkness, he ran.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. (9)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Anika finished her report and clasped her hands smartly behind her back like she was a soldier on parade. She was proud of the way she had handled the Dregs in his absence and it was obvious she wanted him to be impressed. Anika didn’t have ambition in the traditional sense where he had to be worried she was plotting to overthrow him, but she did very clearly want all the responsibility he was willing to give to her as his right-hand woman. He wasn’t sure how to tell her that he’d never been worried about her messing up in his absence so much as he’d been worried she wouldn’t be able to stop Keeg or Pim from doing something dumb. Thankfully that latter disaster hadn’t happened either.</p>
<p>“Thank you for your report,” he told Anika. Leaning back in his office chair. It was nice to be back in his mercher suits and gloves, with his cane by his side. He felt like himself again.</p>
<p>After Inej had sicced the <em>stadwatch </em>on the School for Future Success by reporting that she’d heard Van Schoorl bragging about having carried out the unsolved robbery of the art gallery, they’d all had to stay in Belendt for another week while the <em>stadwatch</em> gathered evidence and decided they weren’t needed.</p>
<p>In the course of the investigation for theft—an investigation which had revealed a bag of paintings in Van Schoorl’s suite and two more hidden in Snijders’s luggage—the school’s status as a scam had also been discovered, just as Kaz had known it would. He had no illusions about what happened from here. There would be trials and Kaz wouldn’t be surprised if Snijders would be able to wriggle his way out of this given enough time. After all, the trials would happen in Belendt, but it was still the Kerch government and there was no justice to be found from them.</p>
<p>Still, that was different from saying that his goals hadn’t been achieved. After Anika finished her report, he pushed himself to his feet and left his bedroom in search of the next group of people he needed to see.</p>
<p>Kaz didn’t often find himself in the Slat’s kitchen for a host of reasons not the least of which being that he wasn’t convinced Noud could actually cook. He would have thought the periodic bouts of food poisoning that broke out amongst the Dregs who did eat Noud’s cooking would have turned everyone off by now, but every time he brought up firing Noud and hiring someone who actually knew what they were doing his lieutenants protested fiercely. Even Anika seemed taken in, which was bizarre because normally Anika had sense.</p>
<p>Stepping into the kitchen was like stepping into another world where cleaning supplies hadn’t been invented. The Slat was overall clearer under Kaz’s leadership than it had been under Per Haskell’s, but Noud reacted to the suggestion that he clean the kitchen on occasion like it was a personal affront, which just made Kaz even less likely to eat anything that came out of the kitchen.</p>
<p>As he moved down the hallway with pots and pans hanging along the walls and deeper into the kitchen, he heard an excited child’s voice chattering. When he stepped into the kitchen proper, he saw Inej sitting at the table with Coos and Theo. Coos was talking excitedly, his eyes shining. Theo was less exuberant, but still looked much calmer and happier than he had been the last time Kaz had seen the brothers.</p>
<p>Inej looked up when he came in and their eyes met. It took Coos minute to realize that his audience had been distracted. He turned in his chair and his face lit up when he saw Kaz. “Kaz!” he exclaimed. “It’s good to see you! I’m glad you’re back!”</p>
<p>Kaz was just glad that the kid didn’t leap out of his chair and try to hug him. “Come on you two,” he told the boys. “I need to talk to you.”</p>
<p>Theo frowned. “We can’t just talk here?” The boy had seemed more relaxed so Kaz had assumed he’d settled in, but now he wondered if Theo had just acclimated to the kitchen and was still terrified of the rest of the Slat.</p>
<p>“No, we can’t,” he said then raised his voice enough to carry. “Noud eavesdrops.” Something fell over the pantry and Noud cursed. Kaz suppressed a smile but Theo eyes widened in horror and he didn’t protest again when Kaz gestured towards the door.</p>
<p>Inej followed as Kaz led the boys back to his office, but he’d figured that she would. When he settled down in his chair she went to perch on the windowsill.</p>
<p>Coos and Theo stood in front of the desk. Theo clasped his hands behind his back like he was standing before a teacher, but Coos started speaking before Kaz had quite decided how he wanted to start this conversation. “Did you get Van Schoorl?”</p>
<p>“The School For Future Success is no more,” Kaz said.</p>
<p>“Yes!” Coos pumped his fists. “I knew you could do it!”</p>
<p>“Coos,” Theo hissed. “Don’t sound so happy about it!”</p>
<p>Coos shot his brother a glare and Kaz hid a smile. Coos would probably fit right in in the Dregs. It was almost too bad that he wouldn’t be staying, but only almost.</p>
<p>“Are we going to get our money back?” Theo asked.</p>
<p>“Currently the Belendt government is investigating the school and it will eventually go to court,” Kaz said. “If you’re lucky, they’ll rule that Van Schoorl has to pay back all the money he scammed. Can you two prove your identities if it comes down to that?”</p>
<p>Theo nodded carefully, looking like he suspected a trick but wasn’t sure what. Coos might fit right in in the Dregs, but Theo was the sort of person who would probably not just survive but come out on top. Kaz had done his best not to think about which one of the brothers he was more like throughout all of this and now he was glad he hadn’t because he suspected there wasn’t an easy answer to that.</p>
<p>“Our birth certificates are in a safety deposit box in Belendt,” Theo said. “Our parents always said it was important to make sure important documents like that couldn’t be stolen.”</p>
<p>That was something Kaz and Jordie hadn’t known to do. They’d brought their birth certificates with them when they came to Ketterdam and then they had floated out to sea with Jordie’s body. That was a good thing given Kaz had gone on to become a notorious criminal, but he was painfully aware that if he ever had to prove his real identity, he had no way of doing it. Hopefully that would never have to happen, but the fact that he couldn’t made him nervous sometimes.</p>
<p>“How likely is it that Van Schoorl will have to pay us back?” Theo asked.</p>
<p>Kaz shrugged. “If this trial was happening in Ketterdam, I’d say approximately none, but this is Belendt so the chances are much better.”</p>
<p>“So, what happens to us if we don’t get our money back?” Theo pushed on.</p>
<p>“I’m arranging for the two of you to have jobs on a farm I own down south,” Kaz said. “It will get you out of Ketterdam and give you a chance to start over.”</p>
<p>Coos’s face fell visibly. “But we don’t want to leave Ketterdam!” he whined. “You already have us jobs here! It’s so much more interesting here than on a farm!”</p>
<p>“Coos,” Theo said, quietly.</p>
<p>“I’m firing you from your current position,” Kaz said. “This is no place for you. I’m giving you an out and I expect you to take it.” He could feel Inej’s eyes on him and he tried to ignore her.</p>
<p>Coos backed down a little, though he still looked like he wanted to argue.</p>
<p>“What is this farm exactly?” Theo asked, he still had the kind of expression that said he was looking for the trap. Kaz wanted to tell him to learn to hide that, but they would be leaving Ketterdam soon so it wouldn’t matter.</p>
<p>“It’s just a regular farm,” Kaz shrugged, doing his best to exude trustworthiness, which admittedly was something he had no experience with. “It’s in a little nameless village outside Lij. I’ve owned it for years and the people who rent it from me grow grain and raise sheep. Nothing usual.” Admittedly he did sometimes use his family’s old property to launder money and since the auction scheme he’d been squirreling the rent and his share of the farm profits away in an account in a bank in Lij that was under his real name just to have something to fall back on if his empire fell apart, but Theo and Coos didn’t need to know any of that.</p>
<p>Kaz watched Theo think about it and eventually decide that if Kaz hadn’t double-crossed them yet he wasn’t going to—normally that was a bad decision, though accurate in this particular situation. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it.”</p>
<p>“No!” Coos moaned. “We can’t go! Theo-”</p>
<p>Kaz and Theo both ignored him. “When do we leave?” Theo asked.</p>
<p>“You’ll get on a barge heading to Lij tomorrow morning,” Kaz said. “I sent a letter to the couple who rents the farm while we were still in Belendt so they’ll know to meet you when the barge comes in.”</p>
<p>Coos was still protesting and arguing that he didn’t want to leave, but Theo looked relieved. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “You’ve done so much to help us.”</p>
<p>Kaz wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he didn’t bother. “Go get some rest,” he said. “That barge leaves early.”</p>
<p>Theo took Coos by the arm and dragged him out of the room. The door swung closed behind them, cutting off Coos’s ongoing protests. There was a long silence.</p>
<p>“Is that farm the Rietveld property?” Inej ventured.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he said, straightening some papers on his desk to avoid looking at her.</p>
<p>She nodded thoughtfully. He tried not to consider whether or not she’d put two and two together.</p>
<p>If she had she didn’t mention it, and simply sat with him while he did paperwork.</p>
<p>~~~~</p>
<p>Mornings in Ketterdam were generally not pretty. If you were at street level the sunrise was hidden by the buildings, so all you could see was the detritus of the carousing tourists who had come through the night before. Kaz made his living off those pigeons, but they still annoyed even him sometimes.</p>
<p>Theo and Coos almost missed the barge because Coos had hidden and refused to go. Eventually Inej found him and someone convinced him to get on the boat. Kaz wasn’t sure what she’d said, but he was glad she’d been there because he wasn’t sure that he’d have been able to pull it off.</p>
<p>No matter what she’d said, she was able to get Coos out of wherever he’d been hiding and onto the barge. Kaz really hoped the kid wouldn’t slip away from his brother and try to come back to Ketterdam. He’d have to give the rest of the Dregs standing orders to keep an eye out for the kid if he did find his way back. Kaz hadn’t gone through all this trouble just for the kid to end up getting eaten alive by Ketterdam anyway.</p>
<p>Kaz and Inej watched from a rooftop while the boys boarded the barge. It probably would have been fine if they had gone down to the barge, but even Kaz couldn’t be absolutely sure he wasn’t being spied on by members of other gangs at any given moment. He didn’t want someone following the boys out to the Rietveld farm and getting curious so it was best if they didn’t appear to be connected.</p>
<p>“So,” Inej said as the barge pulled away. “How does it feel to have done a good thing?”</p>
<p>Like Kaz was going to answer that question. “When are you leaving?” he asked instead, surveying the barge with narrowed eyes. He could just make out Coos craning over the railing, trying to soak in his last glimpse of Ketterdam. He didn’t seem any worse for wear from his experience, which Kaz supposed was a good thing.</p>
<p>Inej sighed. “I haven’t decided yet. Not immediately in any case.”</p>
<p>“Good,” Kaz said. There was a long pause.</p>
<p>“For what it’s worth,” Inej ventured after a minute. “I’m proud of you. For all of this.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t do it for you,” he said, perhaps a bit too testily.</p>
<p>“I know,” Inej smiled. “That’s why I’m proud.”</p>
<p>
  <em>--fin--</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is the point at which I should probably say something profound to mark the completion of this fic, but in reality a couple hours ago I had about five minutes of panic where thought I'd deleted the whole fic off my computer. If that's not a fitting end to a 2020 fic, I'm not sure what is.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when I was still in the planning stages for this I'd estimated it would end up being about 20K and I was right. Given I normally wildly underestimate how long my fics will be, that's pretty impressive.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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